Under the Dark
by karikara
Summary: Strange things come from the forest and its dark spaces, tight with life. This is a slow-burn romance story that I think technically falls into the hurt/comfort genre, but in the strictest sense in that it's about two people who've dealt with unbelievable hardship. The story is after the 4th Shinobi War, and Gaara is around the age of 26. Thanks to my beta Chloe!
1. Chapter 1

The waxing moon spun long black shadows on the surrounding brush. Cacti in columns as tall as telephone poles stood around her, almost seemed to tilt towards her. During her less lucid moments their figures were the most menacing - it was easy to think that a dark outline was the shape of a man, that man.

The worst was waking up with that feeling, like something was standing over you. It was a feeling she knew too well, and it was just one of the reasons she preferred to move at night. Her body wove a bit as her feet dragged against the ground. The walking stick she was too tired to lift trailed beside her, making a long shallow line in the dirt.

She looked up again for the first time in ages. Ahead she saw what must be a wall, cool-looking and glowing like ivory in the moonlight. It looked like a mirage. But surely there were no mirages at night. Could it be truly real? From a distance it looked tall and perfect - as if cut from one single, seamless stone. It rose above the land and scrub, an unassailable opponent stretching for hundreds of yards side to side.

"Damn it," she cursed. Was her delirium so deep that she had only noticed it now that she was nearly upon it? it must be so, and why not? In her exhaustion she trudged for days as if half-asleep towards no destination. A normal traveller in her state might have rejoiced at the prospect of humanity and the things it meant - rest, food, water; and company.

But she meant to be alone. She had meant to wander into the desert - away from that man, and what remained of those people, away to where each point of life was so quietly distinct - away to a place where she could dissolve into that open space forever. But a wall? A wall meant humanity. And humans meant the threat of capture. She knew already the cost of capture and escape.

She had brought few mementos from her flight. There was the staff, snaking a waving line besides her in the sand. It was uncut and unvarnished, and still bore bark and leaves, now shrivelled from the sun. She wore a stained hospital gown that barely reached her knees, and a jacket, bearing the crest of her captors. The woman had… Salvaged it from one of them as she fled. In her pockets there were no tools, only seeds she had collected along the way. In a real way though, the seeds were tool enough for her.

The wall was perhaps a half mile out. She felt no human life near her or behind it, thankfully. She sagged to her knees. The wall stretched so far on either side and the prospect of diverting her course, as tired as she was, it was just too much to bear.

She sat on her haunches breathing hard for a bit, and then finally closed her eyes, she whispered a quiet thanks to the energy she could feel undulating the night around her. Wishing to shelter and conceal herself; not wanting to be disturbed by the more lethal creatures of the world around her; she concentrated on the energy of the plant life beneath the sand and surrounding her body. Silence bloomed around her as the movement of the brush in the soft night wind stopped completely. For a moment, all things around her stood frozen.

Then there was a sound. It began as a susurration, now punctuated with sharp crackles. Around her the brush was growing, reaching, straining towards her. The strands of twigs knit themselves in a dome, weaving a barrier. They finally grew over her in a dense net that the moon could barely penetrate. Shelter made, she pushed the sand around her into an indentation where she could be warmed by the earth as she slept. As her eyes slid shut as she prayed for dreamless sleep. The sighing of the wind in the scrub could suddenly be heard again.

Shiro. The fourth son. The unlucky one. Zettai meditated on the name of his captor as his long body hung, suspended by his ankle. The Grass Daimyo's fourth son sought to torture him into obeisance. Little did the squinting, grasping man understand that all of the injuries that he heaped upon Zettai's body were merely austerities - acts of sacrifice that brought him closer to his God.

For surely, he was being purified, Zettai reflected, for that time when he would meet her again - that time when she would accept him as her consort. Then their true work would begin, Zettai thought, with satisfaction. In the mean time they could hang him, burn him, dismember him. Surely, she would heal every injury. These acts of sacrifice were his penance. He had been unfaithful to her. He had abandoned her in his frustration for her refusal to appear before him. And as soon as he had stepped away, she had manifested, as if to humble him.

It had been a stroke of genius by one of his scientists that had finally unlocked her. Oh, to be there for that day! That glorious union! How blessed were all those that were consumed that day! Zettai had only been able to recover the video of it that thing she revealed herself as in that moment she was indescribably beautiful. Her ego disappeared completely, and she had become heavenly vengeance, personified.

Zettai meditated now on that shining face as he felt the sinews and joints of his right leg slacken and separate. To be hung upside down by one leg for this long would have broken other men physically and psychologically, but he had subjected himself to trials like this in the pursuit of the God. So deep in his meditation was he that Zettai barely noticed when the door to the room swung open. It was that spiteful little man again.

Shiro stood silently before the man's stinking body, slung like a slaughtered animal from a hook on the wall, his once carefully groomed ink and salt hair hanging like a dirty halo around his ears. The image pleased him. Zettai had done the unthinkable. He had lied to him. He had embezzled money, and he had stolen a prize from him - a great power that Shiro had entrusted Zettai to master.

"You are quite content to hang there aren't you, fool?" Shiro asked the man lightly, observing the way his right leg looked pale and distended after so many hours in this position.

"That's fine. I am quite content to keep you there," Shiro continued, smiling; not expecting the resistant idiot to crack just yet, after all the man was a Grade A zealot, bordering on delusional. But Zettai was in his grasp, and other things were, as far Shiro was concerned, on their way to being in-hand. Shiro understood the art of escalating horrors. He could play pain on the body only as a practiced master could.

And even if the man did not break, even if Shiro's technicians unencrypted the project files before Zettai was willing to share his key, there was still this pleasure of extracting some sense of justice from the body of this fool who had so readily betrayed him and led a whole team of Grass scientists Shiro had paid handsomely to do the same.

The Kusakage had already bent over backward assuring Shiro that he had known nothing of Zettai or his team's defection. Shiro was not satisfied of this yet, but at the moment he relied too much on the shinobi of the Hidden Village of the Grass to support him in his manoeuvre. Retaliation for their apparent incompetence was not something he could conduct just yet, but like the barbed lizards he kept in his garden - Shiro was capable of waiting for the right moment to strike.

"So the May Queen is dead, Zettai-sensei?" Shiro asked. "And all your team with her? How neat. How perfect" Shiro said, squatting down on his haunches to bring himself to Zettai's face level.

"I want to believe you, sensei; and still, you refuse to unencrypt those files for me" Shiro said, flicking the other man's forehead, but getting no reaction.

"You know I must assume you're lying?" Shiro continued, prying open the Zettai's eyelid and seeing the pupillary constriction that confirmed that the man was indeed conscious. He also noted the tiny burst capillaries in the whites of Zettai's eye. Strong though he was, the older man was not immune to Shiro's techniques or gravity.

"You know that I must search for them, and for her?" Shiro said. "What did you unleash, Sensei? Was it everything we hoped for? Are you truly foolish enough to think you can keep that weapon from me, after I have invested so much to develop it? If I am a fool for trusting you, Sensei. Then truly, you are a greater fool for betraying me."

With that Shiro blithely patted the man's purple-red cheek, pooled as it now was with blood. "I'll have them take you down now, Zettai-sensei. But tomorrow, I promise you, we'll play a new game."

She felt them before she could see them. There were four human energies. She lay motionless in the depression she had carved out. Perhaps she was still unseen and unfelt. To increase those odds, she released the edges of her own life-energy, letting it disperse, gauze-thin and nearly imperceptible around her. Concealing her chakra in this way would work, but if one of them saw her or the shelter and became curious, she would be out of luck. They walked on for a bit and she dared to hope.

Suddenly she felt it as the four became six. The woman shivered in the sand. It couldn't be them, could it? After all the blood she had shed to get out, to get away. She hoped that it all wasn't for nothing, or she would need to find a way to take herself away from them absolutely; and to make her body irretrievable in the process.

The new two felt like the half-men, the shadow copies like the ones her captors used to use to corral her. Their chakra was a mere fraction of the original four she had felt. It was the half-men that approached her. Their posture and energy was tense. They were ready for a fight.

She would need to take them by surprise if she could. She would need to do it effectively, but not lethally, if she could. Images lanced through her brain of the alternative. Not again. Not unless the situation was totally dire. She closed her eyes again to help her concentration.

The life force of the desert was quieter, true; but this particular area harboured enough energy that she could focus and use it if she tried. She reached out with her mind and felt the towering saguaro and the desert sage bushes, the tips of their branches and tines all glowing points in her mind's eye. She knit her energy together in her mind, encircling the original four pursuers with an invisible ring using the plant life as winder and wool.

Their figures cast about uneasily, sensing her. She had to act quickly. Although tired, she reached and pulled hard on the strings that bound her to the saguaro and brush. As she did so, she tore out of her shelter and ran. Behind her the half men began to chase her.

Her energy strained backward, reached down into the trailing connections behind her and the ground broke, a normally invisible network of roots clawed at her two pursuers. She heard their cries of surprise and she risked looking back. That was her mistake. She did not notice the rock that caught her ankle. Instead, she tumbled right over it and hit her head.

"Saru!" a man's voice was heard as her now still form lay on the ground. "What the hell was that?"

Saru was the first to reach her crumpled, thin form.

"It's a kunoichi" - Midori was right, her jacket has the symbol of the Grass Village.

Ebisu materialized next to Saru.

"Kunoichi? What ninja trips over a rock and brains herself?"

"Well," Saru retorted. "What civilian could do that?" Saru asked, inclining his head back towards the tangled knot of broken earth and roots behind them.

Ebisu grunted. "So much for drills in the Demon Desert. Let's take her back for ID and interrogation."


	2. Chapter 2

She sat in a waiting room and stared at the green fan as it whirred in a lazy circle, rotating as it pushed out little slices of the warm office air. If she concentrated on its rhythm it was easier to dial down the press of people around her.

Where was she? Some place called Sunagakure. It was a name she could remember, but like so many things in her past the knowledge stopped short of useful. It was a hive of people nestled like hornets in the walls of an apparently man-made valley. It was her second morning in the city, and her skin itched with the energy of all the human life around her.

Where she sat with her back against the wall, she could feel the dim buzz of people as they passed in the hall behind her. She could barely suppress the shiver she felt as their chakra crept up her spine. She wondered if Ebisu, one of the men who brought her in, noticed every time she frowned and shifted in her seat.

The compound where she had been held before her escape was - more manageable in this sense. The feeling of the people in the Ant Farm, as she had named it, had become strangely comforting in a way - comforting in that she at least could always number them, and knew where they all were at any time if she concentrated hard enough from her cell. It was funny how knowledge was at least a little like control. That was at least until they opened the door to get her, and her control dissolved in the wind.

Here - there was too much human life around her. The ebb and pull of it left her gasping and awake her first night. As she lay in bed her body seem to lose its shape as she was forced up and out of her own skin. In a way that particular torment may have been better, she was so wrapped up in her senses that her mind had no time for night terrors. And now, sitting in the office today, feeling the hot tingle of the humanity around her, she was too exhausted, too numb to react as intensely.

It didn't help that this city seemed full of out sized energies. Impossible energies. And now the biggest energy yet was waiting for her behind the next door. Another word associated with Sunagakure surfaced in her mind - Shinobi. She knew it meant something like warrior - but a warrior for hire. A mercenary.

She had been informed that she would meet with someone called Kazekage, whether name or title, she was not sure. Her head snapped up as she heard the click of the door. A woman with dark hair a head taller than her stepped out and gave her a look between confusion and disdain, she exited, holding some papers in her hand. The woman said nothing to her but instead set her gaze on Ebisu, as if to shame him for dragging such a sad specimen in.

A man's voice, low but soft could be heard from the office.

"Send her in, Sari-san," he said.

Sari nodded at Ebisu. The woman took a deep breath and stood. If the nuclear reactor feeling of this person, this man apparently, on the other side of the door was this bad from the couch, it was only going to get worse. She hoped things wouldn't get...strange. She was exhausted, and she could feel her efforts to keep all of these foreign energies out straining at the edges. She harboured a slim hope that if she could look pathetic and scared enough they would let her go. If she were to slip up and fail - it would either be her death, or worse, a repeat of the past few years of her life.

As she stood and walked near the door, the chakra from inside slammed into her, and her knees began to shake. At least seeming pathetic would be easy, that was if she could hold together the threads of her fraying shield, she thought grimly as she slowly inched forward in her scrubs, her hands clasped before her in a pair of metal cuffs.

Stars erupted in her vision before it narrowed to a long black tunnel as she stepped through the door frame. Ebisu pushed her forward, firmly holding her up as he marched her toward the throbbing at the center of the room. If it weren't for Ebisu physically propelling her and holding by her shoulder at the same time, she doubted she would have been able to move another inch, so heavy was that energy.

Her forced march halted in a wooden chair a few feet away from a desk made from the same dark wood. She could not bring herself to look up at the man (could it truly be just a man?) behind it. She was too busy grappling with the feeling of electric bugs crawling around behind her eyes. The man at the desk seemed content to stay silent as she tried desperately to collect herself.

She found the strength to look up a little and saw a squat green cactus with long spines like a white cat's whiskers sitting on the desk. It seemed so friendly and incongruous to the feeling that was suffocating her. The cactus was crowned with a string of three fat unopened buds on the top, each one's tip tinged with red. Like finding the calm at the heart of the cyclone, she clutched shakily onto the feeling of the plant and its calm honesty. And it worked, like a little green volume knob to the crawling intensity around her.

Gaara sat and watched the short, slight woman as she came into the room. She was gaunt, half-starved from her time in the desert. Long, messy black hair framed her face. It was fortunate for her that his team had found her. He was surprised to see her visceral reaction to him as she passed through the door. At first, he mistook it for fear - a guilty mind often got the better of weaker people when presented with the prospect of meeting with Sabaku no Gaara.

But as he watched her he realized that it might be something different. She had a strange energy about her. It felt as if it were almost...folded, protectively even, around her. The shape of it was notable, as it seemed to indicate she had some sort of training in molding it. The size of her energy; however, was not. Power-wise the woman appeared to be quite insubstantial.

It was for these contradictions, her purported amnesia, and the almost unbelievable report team 9 had sent back to him that peeked Gaara's personal interest in this apparent deserter from the Hidden Village of the Grass. Although relations with grass had improved, Gaara held a certain amount of ambivalence towards them. Strange things came from the forest and its dark spaces, tight with life.

He sat patiently and watched as her breath returned to a measured and forced, but more normal cadence. Gaara noted that her lips were set in a hard line, as if she were gritting her teeth. She had still not looked up at him, but instead stared at the small candy barrel cactus on his desk. She seemed to calm almost immediately when she saw it. Perhaps it was just his imagination, but the plant seemed to quiver almost imperceptibly under her gaze.

Maybe the report that Ebisu and Saru had given him was not in fact so far-fetched. What sort of thing was this woman? Why was she trespassing so close to one of their training grounds where they tested new techniques? Was she a spy or a threat? The report had been inclusive, and for the sake of the village, Gaara needed to know. He nodded finally to Ebisu.

"Kazekage-sama, I submit to you for questioning an unregistered, possibly rogue kunoichi found in the area just north of the Demon Desert. At the moment her name, her destination, and intent are unknown, but suspected to be malicious. We apprehended..."

"Abducted..." she said, her murmur barely perceptible. She still stared at the plant.

Gaara turned to her in his seat. "Yes?" he asked.

She nearly jumped out of her skin at the sound of his voice, it was as if she had concentrated so hard she had forgotten he was there. For a moment she looked up at him, and he saw her face for the first time - her eyes were wide and tired, and their iris' pale brown shading into a curious dark red at their center. Her features were delicate, but her jaw was strong. On her forehead a nasty purple bruise was fading into green. She gave the impression of a stray, skinny and careworn, a feral cat that had seen better days.

Her initial impression of him was one of neatness. But not a superciliousness sort of neatness. It was the neatness of a blade, a blade that held its edge. Here was a man who loved control at the peak of his power. He wore a stiff jacket, even in the heat of the afternoon. Far from being wilted by the warmth, it was crisp and perfect yet, and his pale skin showed no sheen of perspiration.

His face was calm, even concerned looking, but his eyes and brow were a study in contrast. His bright eyes held an alien keenness, rimmed with a minacious black. Above his left eye though, strangely there was tattooed a single word, "Love". What on earth could that character mean? And how and why did his body hold so much energy?

Gaara held her eyes for a moment, and then looked back down at the plant. Surprised, he saw a brilliant red and yellow bloom forcing its way open as he watched. Perhaps the report was true? The woman swallowed, her lower lip trembling slightly as his gaze met hers again. She quickly looked away.

"Explain...abducted?"

"Do I have to? I think you must know what it means," she said and took an uneasy breath. "Shanghaied...kidnapped? Are any of those words better?"

"You are a foreign kunoichi caught near a sensitive area," Ebisu cut in. "You ran..."

"Ha...and you chased! So, I must be guilty - the logic of a dog," she said softly but saltily.

"It doesn't change the fact that you were trespassing, and you refuse to identify yourself!" Ebisu angrily retorted.

The dark-haired woman sighed, this was an argument that she and Ebisu had clearly had before.

"Ebisu-san," Gaara introjected. "I am conducting this interview."

Ebisu flushed and stood up straighter, annoyed that this woman and caused him to lose face in front of the Kazekage. They sat in silence for a minute more until the woman's gaze found purchase on Gaara's face again. She met eyes with him.

"Is this the part where you ask me more pointless questions?" she asked.

Ebisu hissed at her disrespectful tone.

"I'm sick of questions," she continued. "I was asked them professionally in my last life...I don't want to...try to answer them anymore. I'm so tired..."

"The report I have here," Gaara continued calmly, as he noticed as a second bud unfurl silently, "...Says that you claim to not know where you came from. That you don't know or have a name. Tell me, what can you remember?"

Gaara watched as a shadow played over her mind's-eye. He had been doing his job long enough to recognize shock when he saw it. Whatever she was refusing to recall - she likely had a reason for wanting to forget.

"Why were you in the area near the Demon Desert?" he asked again quietly.

She expelled a shuddering breath, as if resolving to answer at least a few questions to mollify him. "The desert, it sort of...led me to it, attracted me, in a way. Like how water seeks to fill an empty space."

"And you are the water in this case?" Gaara asked, intrigued by her peculiar answer.

"Yes, I guess...anyway, I needed to get away from where I was. I needed to avoid...any contact with humans. The wilderness felt empty...mostly. Empty of people at least. I don't think I knew what I was even aiming towards at first, but then there I was, and it felt right, so I kept walking."

Gaara hit the com line on his desk. "Sari-san, bring in those items."

He listened to the sharp intake of her breath as the third bud opened. His energy was seeping through cracks in her exhausted defences and catalyzing with what it found there, siphoned through her connection with the plant. They locked eyes, and she knew that he had seen it too, although surely he didn't understand what it meant. So much for playing the normal card, she thought, as the three blooms swelled, straining outward, a thin white air root poked out over the lip of the pot.

The woman from the waiting room returned, carrying her walking stick, and the dirty gown and jacket she had worn during her slog through the forest and the desert. Without thinking she reached towards the walking stick, her defender and sole companion through her ordeal before the reaching the sand, but the woman, Sari, gave her a look of disgust as she did so. Chagrined the nameless woman sat back in her chair.

"These were the things that were found on or near you in the desert," the man with the pale eyes said.

"A staff, what appears to be a hospital gown, and a jacket. The jacket bears the insignia of a nin from the Hidden Village of Grass. There is blood on both the jacket and the gown. I'll ask you again, what is your name? And what are you?"

"What am I? Heh," she said. "A person, perhaps? At least I'm shaped like one."

Ebisu grumbled again at her tone, but Gaara held him quiet with a wave of his hand.

"My name... Again, I don't know that I have one, at least they never called me one. Not the sort of name a mother might give you. Subject - that's usually what they called me - that doesn't really sound like any kind of name at all, does it?"

Subject. A picture began to form in Gaara's mind.

"In one of the pockets of the jacket," Gaara continued. "There's an ID. On it is the name Junko Kaoi. Is that your name?"

"No, no, that's not my name," she shook her head, her eyes half-lidded and lost in memory.

"So the jacket is not yours. And what about the blood. Is the blood on it yours?" Gaara continued. The woman paused for a moment.

"No, no it is not," the admission escaped from her accompanied by a shiver.

"Why were you approaching my village?" Gaara asked again, this time more forcefully.

She shook her head and rubbed at the tension headache at her temples with the back of her cuffed hand. Seen from his perspective she had to admit the prospect of a crazed, half-naked woman wearing someone else's jacket and blood would give any reasonable person pause.

"I realize this looks...strange...I realize my answers are not helpful...I had no idea I was coming towards your village. It was a long way off, or I would have felt it, believe me. I would have steered clear like a ship from a shoal. This place and all these people - it's so hard to remember where my skin is. If I could get out of here I would - I don't want to be here. I don't want to hurt..." she swallowed. "Hurt anyone."

"Is that a threat?" Gaara asked, leaning forward in his chair.

"No..." she cried shaking her head. "No, look, what have I done to you, really? You must let me go." she pleaded, light from the windows caught the wetness at the corners of her eye. "I don't want to have anything to do with your people or this place. I just want to...to get out of here, to get away."

As the desperation increased in her voice, Gaara felt a strange vibration thrum through the wood of his desk. He looked down and watched in surprise as the veins of wood grain on its surface of seemed to shift like smoke, creating a series of swirling patterns that finally resolved in a line straight from him to her.

"Let me go," she said as menacing crackling sound, like branches straining in a storm began to fill the room. "I can't say for sure what will happen if you don't."

He blinked at her, surprised by the theatrics and the growing energy he felt in her, but not yet intimidated - it was nowhere near his level. Instead, a sliver of excitement lanced up his spine. What kind of thing are you? he wondered again.

The creaking sound stopped as if awaiting his answer - in that narrow silence he watched as the staff on his desk trembled and cracked. New leaves sprouted from it. The barrel cactus shifted and fractured its pot. The sound of her breath was wild in her chest again.

"I...cannot," Gaara said, shifting his body, ready to stand and answer the wave of energy that was about to crest.

Hearing the words she feared most - the woman released the unravelling bounds of her guard, and grasped hold of the power that was most readily there, his, and pulled. Gaara gasped as he felt her foreign chakra yank at his spine. Everything happened at once.

There was a bursting sound as the windows behind him blew out - every wooden thing and plant in the room either exploded or erupted in mad growth at once, as she lunged forward towards the now open wall. Despite the shock of her novel assault and the rampageous growth all around them, Gaara was still composed enough to catch her by the upper arm before she could launch herself from the now blown out wall.

She straightened her body, tight as a bow towards the abyss as he held his grip, but she made no to move to strike at him. Around them, papers from his erstwhile credenzas fell like white petals, and he could feel her body shake in the void 20 floors above the street below.

The woman looked back at him, her brown wreathed, red centered eye caught his - perhaps it was the contact of her chakra with his, but he felt sure he could see all of her there. In her he saw fear, sadness and...a terrible resolve.

"Let go," she whispered.

He tightened his jaw and began to pull her towards him. Her body trembled once more, and then he felt a sensation that would haunt him long past that day - his grip on her skin grew almost unbearably hot, and then strangely slack. Gaara watched, shocked as she slipped from his hold. He looked down at the wet feeling in his hand and realized with horror that he still held a strip of the skin of her arm clasped in his palm.

For a second, he watched as she fell and noted how calm she looked. She was not clawing the air for purchase. She fell resolutely, unshifting, her eyes shut, there was no intention to soften the blow, no instinct to save herself in her body. She had made a choice. The meaning of her resolution was clear.

He threw the ghastly thing from his hand and crouched like a sprinter at the gate in the broken frame of the wall, casting his energy forward. Gaara could hear the sound of Ebisu and Sari's alarmed voices behind him as he concentrated, calling on the sand of the street to catch her body and slow its fall. He felt with familiar satisfaction its response, and the pressure of her body so slight as it caught in the spire that had weld up to meet her.

He lowered her to the ground - covering her with enough material that she would hopefully not attempt a more - extreme version of the skin slip she had just accomplished. He launched himself like an arrow from the window and landed near her body on the ground. She had come to rest in the middle of the pedestrian avenue of the street in front of the Kage's tower. Her placement, and her dramatic fall from the 20th floor - his floor - had already gathered an appreciable crowd of onlookers around her now fallen form.

The sand slipped away from her body as he closed the distance between them and she began to cough. Disturbed by the prospect that he had pinned her too tightly, Gaara was relieved to watch her stand shakily, and turn to face him, her hands still cuffed. The arm above her right elbow was raw, a skinless patch of fascia encrusted with dust. Blood trickled from her trembling finger tips as he summoned a wall of sand to hide them from the widening circle of watchful spectators.

Above the roar of the electrified chakra in his body he could hear the murmur of the crowd's words, "Kazekage-sama...assassin," tickled at the edges of his perception. He stopped short only a few feet away from her. The buzz of her own chakra seemed slack now - exhausted. It flowed from her and washed over his body like a weak tide in time with her breath.

"Don't..." Gaara began.

"Don't what?" she wheezed, challenging him, despite her position.

"Don't do that again," Gaara finished. "Do you want to die?" he asked, accusingly.

The woman laughed and coughed, "Only if there is no resurrection."

"Well, you'll find neither death nor resurrection here," he said, as he shifted in his stiff suit into a martial stance.

She felt goose bumps erupt across the back of her neck and shoulders as his sand materialized behind her. The darkness of dreamless sleep was immediate.


	3. Chapter 3

She awoke with a gasp, her head pounding. Her motion detected, the greeny-blue halogen lights in the room buzzed on. She was in a plain cheerless room of yellow painted cinder block. The air was stale although she could hear the whir of a fan in the small room that looked like a bathroom on the opposite side. She wore fresh hospital scrubs and was placed on a narrow single bed that she noted grimly that she was cuffed to.

Even curiouser than the metal cuff on her uninjured left arm were a pair of grainy white stone bracelets on either wrist. Fuck no, she thought to herself. She closed her eyes and concentrated. She was...not in the City anymore. Either that or she was so insulated from any humanity around her that she couldn't feel it. The place she was in - it didn't feel like a place underneath the sky. A black pit in her stomach blossomed as she realized that they had put her under the dark again.

Although relieved that she could feel no one, it was irritating in a way that there was no chakra that she could feel from any place around her. In the Ant Farm, she had been able to form a mental map of the warren of tunnels she was trapped within by lying in bed for hours and simply feeling the life energy of her captors travel along the halls in her mind. That mental map had been crucial to her escape, and their end.

A soft whir attracted her attention and she looked up and noted for the first time a camera in a clear bubble of plastic in the upper corner of the room above the door. The lens of the camera and the tiny red light that accompanied it stared at her like an unblinking eye. She heard the whir of it focusing on her once again.

"Focus on this, assholes," she said, proffering her the middle finger of her injured right arm at the lens. After she felt like her point had been made she went back to inspecting the room. Next to her on a night stand was a lamp, a carafe of water, and what looked like three silver-foiled packages of what she hoped was food.

She grabbed the carafe of water and gulped straight from it, and then picked up the foil edge of one of the packets. Seeing that thankfully it was food, she ripped it open. First, she would refuel - then she would take stock of her resources and location. Then, gods help them, she would break out of here.

"Kazekage-sama." Uta's alto voice addressed him from the door frame of ruined office. It had taken his cadre of assistants the last few hours to retrieve what sensitive documents they could from the streets and rooftops below. Not all the files were yet accounted for. The full extent of the Grass woman's explosive escape attempt went much deeper than a few sticks of broken furniture.

Gaara turned from where he stood, arms over his chest, his gourd strapped to his back as he gazed out into the quickly dimming light of the early-evening. Nights came on quickly in the high-walled city of Sunagakure. His gaze lit upon the solid, short form of Uta - one of Sunagakure's top doctors and forensic pathologists. He had asked her to meet him here. Despite its ruined appearance, the tower was still one of the best places to have a private conversation in his city.

"Thank you for bringing your report to me, Uta-sensei," Gaara said.

He watched as the woman picked her way carefully through the snaking roots and branches that covered the ruin of the floor. Dead leaves lay all around. The energy that the woman used to create her means of escape had quickly exhausted the plant life that had made it possible. If he had met her anywhere else, such a dramatic escape for her would likely not have been available.

Wood was used in Suna as decoration - trees were mostly imported and expensive. His office was full of wooden furniture and objects as a marker of the Kazekage's status, and the village's wealth. Gaara's love of growing cacti and other plants was also a chink in his armour in this case. His once cute barrel cactus had swollen to obscene proportions and then quickly liquefied - decomposing in a gel-like goo. It had taken him two years to get it to bloom. It couldn't be helped now.

He watched as Uta eyed the snarled hacked out depression in the side of the office where Ebisu had been extracted from the wall. Ebisu was largely unscathed, but Gaara had a feeling that may have just been luck. An errant twig had drilled right into his shoulder. He was lucky it hadn't been his heart. Ebisu had underestimated her. Gaara had underestimated her. Gaara would not make that mistake again. He would understand what they were dealing with and then he would...manage the problem, whatever that meant. Uta's report was just the first step.

"This new open concept look is a little bit extreme, Boss." Uta joked as she joined his side.

He smirked and reached for the brown paper envelope in her hand.

"What did you find?" he asked.

"Well - some interesting things. We took some blood, and the..errr...skin sample you gave us. Those things are still under analysis. My findings on the initial physical examination are as follows. Overall, she's underfed and exhausted, but otherwise healthy. Her resting chakra is not impressive, to say the least. She also has a low-grade fever. Physically, she's about as weak as a kitten right now. She does not have the muscle tone of a kunoichi."

"Any scars, seals, or tattoos?" Gaara asked.

"Tattoos...no," Uta said, and then taking a chance, she said. "There's no indication that she is somehow a vessel for something, or anything like that. Scars though? There's a lot of evidence that - she may have had many surgeries before, which is strange because she's young and her body seems, as I said, healthy. There's something else that's odd..." Uta continued.

"What's that?" Gaara asked, wondering what could make his normally frank advisor hesitate.

"There are a series of puncture scars on her left and right lower abdomen," Uta replied.

"Puncture scars?" Gaara prompted again.

"Like from a large needle. Well, I can't say for sure. But it looks like she may have been pumped full of hormones and subjected to...ovulation induction and egg retrieval. It's an extraction process usually used in cases of infertility."

"So...what, she's infertile?" Gaara asked failing to see the implications and uncomfortable with the unexpected bent this conversation had taken.

"No, Kazekage-sama. I'm saying she was the donor. Judging by the types of surgical scars on her body. I doubt she was...a willing donor. Somebody cut this woman up good, like a frog in science class. Some of the scars look like the types of cuts you would do on a post-mortem."

Gaara's throat went dry as the information that Uta had just shared with him swirled and settled in his brain. He was beginning to understand why the Grass woman had tried to so hard to escape, and yet she had not raised a hand against him. And now...and now she was sitting in a sort of prison as they spoke. Guilt tugged at him. Guilt and...still more unanswered questions.

"Uta-sensei - answer me carefully," Gaara said, looking the older woman in the eye. "Based on the information you've gathered - would you say that this woman is a threat to our village?"

Uta paused and then cast her gaze around the ruined remains of his office. "Sir, based on the medical report alone, she's...pretty pitiful. Now she hasn't had a psych, and I don't know about the blood work yet, but I would have to say, no. But...then again, Kazekage-sama," Uta said, lifting up her arms to sweep the room. "As rumour has it, she did all this...redecorating all by herself, didn't she?"

Gaara nodded his acknowledgement, his brow knit in thought.

"There are other rumours flying around too, Kazekage-sama," Uta offered.

"Tell me," he replied. His voice hollow. It was clear he was only physically here at the moment.

"The rumour mill has it that this woman is a kunoichi from the Hidden Village of Grass, sent to assassinate you. The general idea seems to be that any such attempt should be met with swift action. Well, with a counter attack, sir."

Gaara sighed. War, huh? How quickly we slip into our old ways at the first provocation.

"Let it be known, Uta-sensei," Gaara said. "But not from me...that this woman is likely a rogue agent. Do not confirm or deny that she is related to the Hidden Village of Grass. Tell them signs are unclear. Tell people...that she has a brain injury. That she is erratic and does not understand what she's doing."

"TBI, huh?" Uta asked. The woman from Grass had been unconscious the entire time she had been examined, and they had drugged her to keep her so. She had a bruise on her head, but nothing serious in the way of a recent head injury.

But the Kazekage had spoken with her before the incident happened. Brain damage...It was one of the best reasons Uta could imagine that any fool would try to tangle with the man of the Red Waterfall.

Gaara didn't hear her question, or at least did not respond. His eyes were fixed once again at the lip of the cliff surrounding the village to the West. Someone's experiment - a rat in a cage? She was about to wake up if she hadn't already in yet another cage.

On the surface he could tell himself his concern was about the unanswered questions...the ambiguous threat she represented, and the all too familiar threat of war with another Village, after all he and the leaders of the Five Nations had worked for.

And yet, he also knew what it felt like to be someone's experiment. He was finding it difficult to wipe away the idea of her scars, or the slick, sickening feeling of her skin as it and she fell away from him, or the puncture marks that must sit somewhere below the line of her navel.

What wouldn't a woman who had suffered all that do to be free? He knew that he must go to the Lookout. Immediately.

If she were to escape, he knew too well what awaited a person with her gifts when she got her freedom if she lacked the skills to defend herself. Exploitation and death. She was fortunate he had found her, and she needed to understand her luck.

"Thank you, Uta-sensei. Tell me what the blood results say as soon as you have them, whenever you have them. I will be awake. This matter is priority 0-1."

"Yes, Sir," Uta marvelled at the classification. She watched the Kage drop like a hawk from the gash in his tower into the deepening dusk.

The atmosphere seemed calm, as it usually did. The calmness in contrast to the growing restlessness in his mind grated against Gaara's nerves. His brother Kankuro had always derided the men and women of the Lookout as mission-dodgers and weaklings - nerds, but Gaara appreciated their expertise. There was a use for every tool among Gaara's Shinobi.

Gaara's opinion was influenced, after all, because of his own natural inclination to keep a watchful eye on things. The techs at Lookout helped him keep track of his city and beyond when he could not, and in the many years since he had been separated from Shukaku, the need for human sleep applied to him too. Their importance had only increased.

Wary of the keyed-up tension that today's "attack" had caused among at his citizens, Gaara took pains to conceal his activities. He sent a Sand Clone to be seen in the greenhouse where he often liked to relax in the evenings with his plants.

All should appear as normal, especially given the murmurings about the Hidden Village of the Grass. Gaara glowered as he thought of Ebisu. The man was both as wide and as dumb as his namesake. He wondered not for the first time if a keener nin would have recognized the depth of the woman's oddity. Chakra perception and control was not Ebisu's strong suit.

Gaara entered the Lookout through his own private entrance and walked a tight line straight to his own viewing room. Within it his two top technicians, code name Migime and Hidarime sat at their terminal.

"Yo, Shoukugan-sama!" Hidari saluted with one hand as his other remained buried in a bag of chips. Hidari pretty much epitomized the stereotype that Kankuro had about the Lookout crowd, including their too familiar nature, but Gaara knew that Hidari was the best. He understood the hardware and software better than anyone else. Migi on the other hand noticed everything and had a remarkable gift for concentration.

Gaara nodded at the two men. "This mission is now classified 0-1," were the first words out of his mouth.

"Weee, no kidding, Boss?" Hidari replied. "Well, she doesn't seem like much, feisty maybe, but not too much trouble."

"Feisty?" Gaara said.

Gaara's eyes went immediately to the monitor 3, marked as displaying a live feed from 210 in the Bunker. The Bunker was an underground complex built decades ago by his father during the paranoia of the pre-Jinchuriki days. It was around that time 30 years ago or so his father had also hatched plans to attempt to seal the Shukaku within one of his future children.

The third time, with Gaara, had been the charm. The Bunker, which Gaara still maintained in a cursory way as a potential resource was yet a metaphor and monument in Gaara's eyes to the waste and excess of that stupid Cold War time. To add to his discomfort of the place, there was the fact that the Bunker was the area where the Village retreated to, on the occasions when the Shukaku arose.

The cameras in the Bunker were old, and the feed-out was a grainy black and white. He saw her lying there...the woman, on her back. She was rubbing her hand lightly over her bandaged arm. He realized he would need to think of a code name for her, if she refused to give one.

"Show me what she's been up to, at a rate times 10," he said.

Migi clacked a number of keys on the keyboard in front of him. "It's up on monitor 2," he said.

Gaara watched at fast speed as the woman was brought unconscious into room 210 in the Bunker under Uta's personal watch. As per his instructions the room was cleared of all unnecessary items particularly wooden or plant-derived content, her limp form was cuffed to the bed as an additional precaution. The quartz cuffs had been his own improvisation - a tactic that he had used with other troublesome captives in the past, albeit this time he had left them unlinked - for the moment.

A nurse left a bed pan, packets of MREs and a carafe of water by the bed and he then cleared out. The woman lay unmoving in her drug-induced sleep for what read out as 10 minutes before the lights went off automatically.

"Now we get four hours of darkness while sleeping beauty rests," Hidari said, zooming the knob ahead to a time signature about 20 minutes before his meeting with Uta. The lights in the room flickered on as she lurched upright in the bed, panic suffuse in her face and posture even through the grainy screen.

"And here's where she notices the steel hand cuffs, and your sand cuffs, eh?" Hidari grinned at his own joke, Migi groaned. "Anyway, she looks around the room - ah, here's where she notices the camera, and she gives us a very unladylike gesture in 3-2-1...Gaara watched her face as she flipped off the camera.

"She's saying something," Gaara stated.

"Yeah, you don't need sound to know what it is do you?" Megi replied.

"Unfortunately, the coms in the Bunker are only one-way. She could hear us, but we can't hear her. We can update that though, if our guest is going to be here for a while," Hidari explained.

"I will arrange a time," Gaara nodded.

"Here," Hidari continued his narration. "Is where she gulps down an entire litre of water and eats not one but three MREs one after the other."

"Oof...the desperation," Migi remarked.

"...And she's been laying there with her eyes closed for the past 20 minutes," Hidari pointed back at monitor 3, "She's not asleep. She keeps moving that bandaged arm up in the air every once in a while, and waving her other hand over it like this," Hidari demonstrated. "It doesn't seem to be some sort of jutsu - maybe the bandage just bothers her."

Gaara watched on the live feed as the arm ritual happened again. Had she damaged her nerves along with her skin - the arm should feel like it was on fire to the touch, unless Uta had given her some kind of local anesthetic. He watched as she sat up once again and looked straight at the camera. She pointed at the steel cuff this time and said something. He couldn't read her lips because of the graininess of the feed. Then he watched as she calmly and methodically dislocated her left thumb to remove the cuff.

"So it begins," Gaara whispered.

"Hmm...maybe she just has to pee? Look."

Sure enough she made a line to the bathroom and slipped out of sight. What seemed like far too many minutes passed while she was inside.

"Is there a camera in the bathroom?" Gaara asked finally.

Migi gave Hidari a look that Gaara was too focused on the screen to see.

"Nope, but uhh...again, your wish is our command."

"We'll see," he said. "There must be a vent in the bathroom I think she's wondering if she can squeeze through it at the moment."

"Boss, why isn't this woman under regular lock down?" Hidari asked. "She tried to murder you in your office with your own cactus, right?"

"No, she did not," Gaara replied coolly, his brow quivered in annoyance. Suna's rumour mill was churning at full blast. "The bunker is the best place for her." The bunker had been built entirely out of steel and concrete with the exception of some of the internal doors and furnishings.

It lay in a dry lifeless valley a mile to the West of town away from any handy greenery or human chakra that woman seemed to be able to exploit somehow. The memory of the tearing flow of her energy reaching out and pulling on his spine was still fresh in his mind. The Bunker, he had reasoned, was a pit that this yet unidentified creature could not climb out of.

Finally, she emerged from the bathroom and began inspecting the door handle, the door, the ceiling, the floor, this time with her hands. He prayed that the team that put her to bed did a proper job of removing anything organic except for the food from the room.

They watched in silence as she methodically pulled open the drawers of the metal desk besides the bed and inspected the lamp. Finally, she went back to the bed and pulled off the blankets and the sheets revealing the narrow mattress and the...box spring below.

"That box spring is made with wood isn't it?" Gaara asked.

He watched as she unplugged and wrapped the porcelain lamp in the sheet. She smashed the lamp and used one of the sharp shards to split open the under lining of the box spring to reveal the lattice of wood beneath.

"I guess so? Is that problem?" Migi asked, turning to the Kazekage. Gaara was already gone.


	4. Chapter 4

She clutched the wooden shiv in her hand and concentrated to find his exact position. His presence was so strong, that it flooded her senses if she didn't concentrate to pinpoint the exact center of it. The wood in her hand was now a sliver of what it had been.

Very old and dry, the wood contained nearly no energy of its own, just the memory of life. She had to resort to using her own blood to get it to change for her each time, and each time she lost a chunk of the wood; and more of her limited reserves of personal energy.

The woman knew her limits. She had only a few short, brutish months - maybe years of her life that she could remember, but most of her time had been occupied with harsh lessons in the limits of her strength. All the same, some of the tasks they had set before her she was able to master in time. Compensating by her own power alone for her low energy had sadly not been helped by their "training". In this dry dead place there was nothing she could borrow, and to yank on that man's chain again was not an option.

At least she was away from the mad press of village's chakra. Wherever she was, her head felt much clear than it had in days, and although the food she had wolfed down to get enough energy for her healing had felt like chalk in her mouth, at least she was no longer famished.

The woman closed her eyes again and concentrated. He was two floors above her - very nearly directly above her now. Although she was loath to go deeper into the underground, his advance had pushed her further below as she felt him descend. The only good news about his presence was that his movements betrayed the layout of at least part of the bunker - the most important part - the exit. She only wished she hadn't worn her little wooden key down to nearly a nub already.

Could he sense her? Perhaps, but if so, surely not very well - if he could she would already be caught. As soon as she could feel him at what must be the door she employed what the scientist had referred to her as her mirror cloak. Feeling the pattern of his chakra and not really imitating it she instead, spread herself out thinly - so that her pattern lay nearly imperceptibly against his.

It was a technique that she had practiced before, that they had helped her perfect. Unfortunately, it must have been clear to him that she had not already escaped. Either that, or he had an eye in the sky that told him so. She noticed as she descended the floors and the damn automatic lights flicked on as she passed - she did not have any skills to fool those - that she could hear the noise-some whirring of cameras at the end of each hall zeroing in on her.

She had fled to her current position to escape the prying eye of one and was now in a wide hall full of metal tables and chairs - a disused and dusty cafeteria. Fortunately, there seemed to be no automatic lights in here.

A glance down the stairwell on her way there had shown her that there appeared to be at least three other levels below this one. As a diversion, she had peeled off her bandage and tossed it down the shaft in the stairwell. It came to rest on the landing below this floor, not as far as she hoped but visible, but she prayed this childish tactic would be enough. Her thin excuse for a plan was to wait here now until he hopefully continued to descend in search of her, and then - well, move as quickly and as quietly as she could up and out. There were no ambient life forms for her to harness, and as to her ultimate defense - she yet refused to use it on him or anyone.

Gaara stood on the second floor of the compound, irritated that he could not yet pinpoint her position clearly. He had entered the Bunker and immediately looked up at the first camera in the entryway. He made the hand signal to keep radio silence to Hidarime and Migime, who he was certain were monitoring him from afar.

He could use his Sand Clones to roust her out through sheer volume, but he did not want to traumatize her further, particularly after learning about her medical report. Perhaps her memory loss was real, perhaps not. Gaara was certain that she knew more than she had shared so far and taking her in such a way would only make her more resistant to him later.

It was becoming clear to Gaara quickly that Ebisu and his team were even more thick than originally thought. Or perhaps if the woman had employed similar tactics on them - they chalked up her near absence of chakra to simply being that weak. She was certainly not physically strong and was thin as a twig from her journey when they had found her, he had to give them that.

He reached out with his senses. There was a persistent glimmer as he calmed his mind - almost like a shiny pebble winking back at him from beneath the surface of a stream. He was sure it was her - and if he relaxed he could feel it brighten, but strangely his sense of her exact location became less clear the brighter the spot became.

Gaara thought of Migime and Hidarime back at Lookout. Knowing their admiration for his skill, they must have thought he was toying with her, drawing out this game of cat and mouse for the fun of it. Only he knew that sadly he was not; her evasion was real and effective. Gaara sighed and thought for a moment. What had she said about Ebisu - a dog's logic?

He felt a rush of shame as he realized that in his frustration he was treating her like prey. Now, after having at least an inkling of what she had gone through. If he wanted her to trust him, and to tell him what she truly knew - this was exactly the opposite way to do it.

Shaking his head at his own stupidity, Gaara turned from where he stood and headed towards the stairs, this time to exit. The Bunker had only one way in or out. He would let her approach him there. If she stayed inside, she stayed inside, and he would seal the door to prevent her escape. If she decided to venture out perhaps he could speak with her. He wished once again that the coms were two ways - if they were he could at least tell her that he wasn't waiting outside just to pounce on her.

Surprised, she felt him leave the underground compound that first night. Wary of what she was sure was a trap she finally succumbed to her curiosity and drive to be liberated and ascended the stairs. This was a logical strategy for him - why go through all the trouble of trying to find her, when all he needed to do was wait at the entrance like a spider?

She found the entrance fairly easily thanks to the mental map his presence had given her. The door she discovered was a jar. She shivered when she saw it - the fact that he had left it open for her to tempt her further. It was too much. She closed her eyes and reached with her energy and felt the vivid edge of his chakra perhaps 50 yards from the entrance.

Finally, painfully, her mistrust of his behaviour overrode her desire to escape. The entire underground compound was hers for now. She would locate every stick of wood, every scrap of plant material and do her best to prepare for whatever was going to happen next.

A few hours later she returned to the door. It was shut. She cast out for his energy and felt nothing. Her hands trembling, she retrieved her little wooden "key" from her pocket. After finding the door seemed to be locked from the outside she decided to try her trick again and was pleased when the door fell back and swung on its hinges. Behind it though, was a wall of rock-hard sand.

The next time she was lying in bed when she felt his chakra like an explosive blip on the floor two levels above. She nearly fell as she lept out of her cot and grabbed the wooden stake she left by the nightstand. She stood there panting, straining to feel his movement, and was surprised when his energy quickly receded.

After a few hours fighting sleep clutching her makeshift weapon, she fell asleep curled up in the corner against the wall in her bed. She awoke later, neck and back aching, to find the compound still empty of his presence. She decided to go and inspect the door once again.

She was surprised to see there a plastic container full of neatly stacked MREs and a note in an envelope closed with a shiny green wax seal. Glancing up at the video camera she knew was there, she checked the door again, the sand barrier remained. So, she decided to read the letter. She thumbed open the wax seal gently and read in neat black script the following message:

Dear Ojou-san,

I can only imagine your past and what you may have gone through. It is not my wish to return you to the place you fled from, and yet, your existence and your refusal to share information present to me several problems and one crucial decision. This is a decision that I would like to make in an informed way, as it will critically impact both you, and potentially my village.

This most pressing decision is, of course, what should be done with you - whether you are to enjoy the freedoms you desire, or not. Typically, a Shinobi who has been captured and found guilty of misbehaviour in front of a foreign state or enemy is either used as a bargaining chip for political dealing, which, in this case, I do not have any current incentive to do, or returned quickly and quietly to their country of origin to be disposed of there as the respective Kage sees fit.

This I would be prepared to do; however, there are several notable facts in your case that give me pause. First is your consistent denial that you are a Shinobi as well as your bodily condition, which suggests you may have been subjected to physical trauma. The second notable aspect is the particular nature of your gift.

You seem to possess a rare ability to manipulate the life-energy of both the plants, and potentially even the animal life around you. To your credit, you have used this power only to aid in attempted escape, but not to perpetrate any serious intentional injury as of this time. I must advise you that if you were to do so, I am entrusted to protect my village from all threats. The duty to protect is first among my responsibilities, and I will not fail to execute that duty.

Regarding your release, as Kazekage of the Hidden Village of Sand, I cannot make a reasonable determination until I have more information. This is information that I hope you have and are willing to share in confidence with me. If you are truly a refugee fleeing persecution, the option of a probational asylum will be available to you.

I will return before dusk tomorrow, and the following day to hear personally your reply. I hope to discuss this matter with you expediently. The Hidden Village of the Grass has yet to make inquiries regarding you. However, this may soon change. Any petition submitted by them could present a serious complication if I am unarmed with the facts of your case.

Regards,

Gaara

The first night of his two-night timeline, she only came as far as the door. Gaara set up a simple camp about 100 feet from it. The moon was nearly full, but despite its glow he set a propane fire ring out in front of him to warm the night and provide more light. It would do no good to wait for her like a shadow in the dark.

Gaara saw her shape in the open door, but not her features. She held one of the stakes he knew she had fashioned from scraps found around the compound. Migime and Hidarime had kept him up to date on her methodical search and cannibalization of the Bunker and its contents. She paused, outlined in a halo of halogen light and he counted to 2 minutes before she retreated once again. He was disappointed but not unsurprised. Trust takes time. Time was not a commodity that they had, unfortunately. He meditated there for another hour before sealing the entrance once again.

The second night she arrived earlier, the moon had only just peeked above the East rim of the grey canyon walls that surrounded the hollow, lifeless depression where the Bunker had been constructed. The automated light from the still blown off Bunker door flipped on again, and she stood in the entry only for a moment before exiting. Just outside the door she took the long wooden stake she held and thrust it pointedly into the sand as if to state that she was not defenseless and that she was intentionally choosing a detente.

She still wore the scrubs she had been given after her examination, her breakout of her holding cell had not enabled him to bring her much else. But she looked better fed if not perfectly rested, and she had taken pains to smarten up before this meeting. She walked barefoot through the sand, shoulders squared despite the cool night wind towards the fire ring and him. Her energy had the same curious contracted sensation he remembered from their first meeting. He had thought carefully about how to present himself both nights and had opted for the simple beige uniform of the sand guard, a less intimidating look than his usual attire, with his gourd slung at his hip.

He marked with surprise as she got closer that not only did she no longer have a bandage on her upper right arm, there also appeared to be no wound there, but a patch of skin, identical to the rest of her arm, if perhaps a bit more pale. Each time she presented more mysteries to him.

She watched him carefully as she approached, her jaw clenched against the chill of the desert night and the shiver his bright energy sent through her. One of the things that had sent her back downstairs without speaking to him the night before was the knowledge that within the sand he was very much in his own element. His vermillion energy bled into it seamlessly, like a hot spring into the cold ocean. She recalled his control over that element in the City vividly - the way it arrested her fall from the sky, its feeling like a smothering blanket on the street, and then the swirl of it as he constructed it into the wall that surrounded them.

Here she could feel his control over it all the more vividly in this empty place. The prospect of stepping out into the dirt the night before was too much - whether trap or talk, she was stepping into his den, his world. This place, the desert, she sought out of fear of her own power, it was ironically the place where he found his. Not wanting to appear weak the second time she approached him though, she resolved to step out into that energy confidently, although she could feel her heart racing in her chest as she thrust her makeshift staff into the sand outside the door.

She fought the urge to wrap her arms around herself to ward off the quaver of her spine as she drew closer. Instead, she walked stiffly and resolutely forward. He would not see her shake. She had spent the day thinking carefully about what she wanted from the meeting and what to tell him. She had considered what might satisfy the Kazekage's need to know while allowing her not to disclose - everything.

The full extent of her crimes and her ordeal were hers to know alone. This stranger didn't have that right to all of it, especially given the temptations such knowledge could present. To make matters worse, she suspected that his medics already had something of hers besides her freedom that she wanted desperately to recover.

About 15 feet out from the fire ring she paused, strands of her long dark hair strayed across her face in the night breeze and she tucked them behind her ear. He stood slowly to welcome her, wary of any sudden movements on his part that might scare her off.

"Good evening, Ojou-san," he said, bowing slightly to her. His considerate greeting took her aback, and she knew her surprise must show plainly on her face. His appearance seemed softer that night, as if he'd taken pains to come to her more as an equal. But the dark rings around his keen eyes belied that softness. As he said in his letter, he was judge, jury and executioner of this city, his city, Sunagakure. She breathed deeply to center herself.

"Good evening, Gaara-sama," she said, nodding awkwardly at him, but choosing to address him respectfully with the name he'd disclosed on his note to her.

He nodded and then gestured to a blanket, folded and set on the ground two arm's lengths away from him on his left. "Please sit," Gaara instructed her politely.

She exhaled slowly, she would have preferred to sit further from him, and she still could. His apparent kindness made her wary, as well as the almost meditative stillness of his energy. She did not know what it or his kind regard meant. Nonetheless, she approached him and grabbed up the blanket from the ground, unfolding it she arranged it carefully so she would sit on it instead of the sand directly, and then she wrapped the remainder around her shoulders to defend against the night's cold air on her back.

"Would you like something to drink?" he asked after she seemed to be settled, noting how carefully she arranged herself to avoid touching the sand.

"No, let's just begin," she said, looking beyond the propane fire now to the moon as it rode the dark edge of the canyon.

"First I thought we should start with the matter of how I should address you," Gaara began.

She looked back to him quizzically, apparently unsure of what his statement meant.

"Your name?" Gaara asked.

It always started with her name, she thought bitterly. All of her human interactions were bound to fail on take-off because this first enter to conversation was immediately unassailable for her. She supposed she could pick something, but all she could think of were at the moment were the handful of names her captors had let slip. No, she could not wear one of their names.

Noticing the discomfort play over her features in the firelight, it seemed clearer still to him that her memory loss appeared to be genuine. Gaara decided to change tactics.

"The moon is full tonight," Gaara said. Perhaps if they could speak of something else, she would relax.

"The moon..." the woman said, her dark eyes warming as she gazed at its floating shape. "It's funny, the moon, she feels...so strangely like a woman doesn't she?" she asked, glancing at him quickly to see if he was prepared to endorse this strange statement.

Surprised by this non-sequitur, Gaara frowned. Did this woman know of the Otsutsuki? Was she somehow related to that clan?

Noting his pause, she dared to look over again and saw that his eyes seemed even more shadowed. Had she said something wrong?

"Please explain what you mean," Gaara prompted, not wanting to lose the thread.

"As you...might imagine, based on our last...interaction, I have a sort of connection to things...living things. I can feel them...plants, animals, even humans. But not things like rocks or water or sand, well, usually. You're the first person I've had the chance to ask this question. Tell me, if the moon is just a rock in the sky, why is it then that I can also feel the moon?"

"What does it feel like?" Gaara asked, relieved that the woman seemed not to know of the Otsutsuki.

"It feels like...a friend. Or at least like it's watching over me. You know it's funny, the first time I saw the moon with my own eyes was only a short time ago. Before I could tell you its name. I could even describe to you what it should look like, and how it waxed and waned, but the knowledge was just...words, just words. Like they were facts written down in my mind.

"And then when I saw it for the first time, no words could prepare me for what it felt like or how it really looks. It's amazing how a description of a thing can be so wholly inadequate when you finally see it. The moon was there when I first started this...new life. I moved mostly at night you see, and there her light was with me."

There was a silence as this first successful exchange settled between them.

"Aiynuur," Gaara said quietly.

"Sorry?" she said, turning her eyes back to him.

"Aiynuur - do you like the sound of it?" he asked.

"Aiynuur," she said. She thought for a moment. "Yes, I think I do," she said.

"Then that is what I will call you," Gaara replied. "It's a very old word. It means moonlight."

She looked up at the mirror of ghost light, creeping up the horizon and as soft smile played across her features. "Aiynuur," she said finally. "Alright." He watched as she let the blanket drop from her shoulders, as she swept her mass of black hair over one side and began to work her fingers through it, perhaps a nervous gesture over what in the conversation would come next now that they were finally introduced.

"What can you remember about where you came from, Aiynuur-san?" Gaara continued.

"I can't say for sure where it was. I know that...your first concern must be understanding what nationality I am. As...my people seem to have incarcerated me, I can't say that I feel terribly attached to them. But, perhaps I wasn't one of them, after all."

"I can say, though," she continued. "That that symbol, the one on the jacket I had - was worn by almost everyone. Although, sometimes..."

"Yes?"

"I don't know if this is important, but sometimes I might see someone from the outside, someone I didn't know. And their symbol was like this...May I?" she asked, gesturing towards the sand next to her.

"May you...what?" Gaara asked, confused.

"Draw in the sand?" she elaborated. When he still looked perplexed Aiynuur continued, "Sorry, it just feels like...a part of you."

Surprised that her senses were that acute, Gaara nodded. He had taken care to infuse the sand with is own chakra before she came out. She was still a wild card, and he did not trust her yet. Perhaps that's why she'd taken such pains to sit down on the blanket, he thought. It must have taken a lot of strength to approach him here, he reflected, if she could see so much if she knew she was walking into such a vulnerable position.

Not waiting for any other further permission, Aiynuur smoothed down the sand next to her and traced the three peeks of the grass insignia. "This is what your people have referred to as the Hidden Grass symbol," she explained. "This was worn by the scientists and people who...were my captors," she said.

"I don't know what this means, but there were others I saw sometimes as well. Outsiders who might come and go...They were stronger, more intense. Their energy...was more like some of the people in your city. Shinobi you call them. They wore signs like this," she said. Aiynuur lifted her finger up and dragged a gash over the pattern, ignoring the electric fizzle of the sand beneath her touch.

Gaara was surprised by this disclosure. Could he believe it? Her admission that the outside agents she saw appeared to be masquerading as rogue Grass nin was an intriguing detail he would have to think about more deeply. He felt her hand as she smoothed away the symbol in it again, perhaps wanting to erase even the appearance of that reminder of her captors. She brushed the sand gently from her fingers and sat back again.

"What sort of place were you in, Aiynuur-san? Describe it to me please," Gaara requested, wanting to lead her slowly towards the question he ultimately aimed at - just why she was held captive in the first place.

"What sort of place?" Aiynuur sighed, clutching at the tingle she could still feel on her right hand. "It was a little like this place, in some respects," she said, nodding towards the bunker. "It was also underground. But it was full of people. There were 13 in total. Thirteen and the man in charge, who would come and go as well. They also lived there, above me. If I sat in my room and concentrated I could feel them, I could know the shape of the place around me based on their paths. That's why I always thought of it as an Ant Farm. You know? That child's toy?"

Gaara nodded. "Was it a prison?" he asked.

"If I committed a crime, they never told me. I was...usually the only one who seemed to be kept there. Although not all of them...worked with me," Aiynuur disclosed.

"And so, why were you kept there?" he asked. Gaara waited in silence for her to answer. Had he lost her? He looked over at her where she sat now with her knees held against her body with one arm, her hands still played nervously with the tips of her hair as she looked at the fire, lost in anxious memory and totally unguarded.

In the moment she looked so exposed...and a childish desire to offer her some assurance seized him. Swallowing the feeling back he began again, "Aiynuur..."

"They..." she interrupted him, setting her jaw defiantly as she glared back at him and let her knees drop to one side as she shifted to face him. "First they wanted to understand me...And then they wanted to exploit me. When they found I would not cooperate, then they decided...to extract everything from me...everything that they thought they could use," she said, her voice firm, even as tears gathered at the corner of her eyes.

"Their "tests" as they called them," she continued, looking away again as a tear escaped her eye, "never stopped. There were certain things I would not do, refused to do for them, but he found paths around my defences. Ultimately...they went too far. Ultimately they gave me...the seeds of the things I could use to destroy them."

It felt like the shape of the truth to him, but she gave him no true detail. Gaara noticed that as she spoke that her left hand clutched at the patch of pale new skin on her upper right arm.

"And did you?" Gaara asked. "Did you destroy them?'

Aiynuur closed her strange eyes. "Yes..." she sighed, clutching her recently injured arm closer to her.

"How?" Gaara prompted. In that answer, he felt confident lay the true secret of her power, for she evidently did not have the strength nor the formal training of a Shinobi. She was silent again for a moment.

"In my body is a curse," Aiynuur explained. "You should know that I want two things above all else - my freedom, yes, and control over my own flesh," she said, flashing a defiant gaze at him once again. "After you incapacitated me I'm sure you had me examined, my blood drawn. Please, if you love your village and if you love your people - give back what was taken from me. Destroy any of the information that has come from it."

"This is not a threat - it's irresistible truth, like gravity. Gaara-sama, if you try to harness what's in there, that curse will spread to you. It will swallow you up, as it did my captors. If these things are not presented to me, be sure that I will try to return them myself."

"Even if that's as you say," Gaara frowned, impressed by her passion. "As a prisoner, you are not in a position to make those demands."

Aiynuur shook her head, and repeated levelly, "My freedom, my body, these are the things that I need absolutely. You are physically stronger than me, and I cannot deny that. You are faster, and you are better trained - but I assure you, you're not stronger than the stuff - the thing that makes me. It's true that I personally may not live long enough to see you regret that mistake, but I pray for your sake - and for your village's sake - that you do not. And now I've said all that I have to say. This meeting is now over."

And with that, the woman stood and turned to leave. Gaara stood, too.

"Wait..." Gaara said. There were still so many answers he needed to know.

"There is nothing more I will say," Aiynuur replied, pausing in her retreat.

Gaara exhaled and nodded. "I understand. I will need some time to think about what information you have shared with me tonight. I cannot give you what you have asked for...immediately, but is there some other smaller thing that I could provide you, as a sign of goodwill?"

Aiynuur thought for a moment, feeling the prickle of his energy through her bare feet, like the pins needles you get when your legs fall asleep. "Yes, fresh fruit. Soap. A clock. Some clothes, but normal clothes, no more of these scrubs, please...and books...even just one book."

Gaara thought for a moment on the peculiarity and the simplicity of her requests. "The clock, soap and the clothing I can provide, but the other things concern me, given what they are made of, and your abilities."

"It's impossible to do something with the pulp of a book," Aiynuur replied in mock exasperation.

"Perhaps..." Gaara said, but she would need to prove herself more to be given anything that might aid an escape, and the need to keep her tucked away and guarded was all the more pressing based on the lengths her captors had taken to study her. He would need time to digest all of this.

"Alright...no books," she said. "Can you please at least...read to me then?"


	5. Chapter 5

Another two days passed before she felt him again. At least it seemed like two days. She had asked for a clock for a reason. Part of the normalcy she longed for was to know not only where she was, but when she was. In the Ant Farm, Aiynuur had no sense of day or night except for what she could glean from the rhythms of her captors.

For her there was only awake or asleep - either state could be interrupted at any time with their demands. All time existed in an undifferentiated state under the dark - a cyclical derangement of dreamlessness, horror and boredom that seemed endless in its abstraction from time.

When she felt the return of his energy she was exploring more of the living quarters. Aiynuur had not yet pried them all open, and she intended to. It was a way to pass the time and look for new resources.

He had, to her great surprise, read to her over the past two nights as she had asked him to. Aiynuur was sitting in bed when the loud speaker came on the first time, and his voice came over the old tin-y PA system.

"Excuse me, Aiynuur-san. I have a book for you, is now a good time?" he asked.

She smiled in surprise.

"If it's OK, please give me a sign, I cannot hear you," Gaara said.

Aiynuur shot up from her bed and ran to the room next door, where she had left the video camera intact. The light turned on automatically and she gave a wave to the camera before sitting down on the mattress, now on the floor after her cannibalization of its box spring as well.

"Ah, good evening," Gaara found himself smiling, pleased that she wanted to hear what he had to share.

He paused for a moment, Gaara had wondered about what to read her. His own inbuilt sense of paranoia had steered him clear of anything relating to news or current events - just on the very off chance she was indeed part of a plot and she might find some sort of signal in there. He finally decided simply to read her what he had been reading recently himself, as it was as innocuous as it could be. Gaara took a deep breath and began.

"This is from Cacti and Succulents, The Suna Plant Disease Handbook. Chapter 13. Cactus Anthracnos...This fungus affects several kinds of cacti, Cereus, Echinocactus, Mammillaria, and particularly Opuntia..."

Movement on the monitor currently synced with room 208 at the Bunker caught his eye. Aiynuur sat, her arms wrapped around her knees, and her shoulders seemed to be shaking - although with what emotion he couldn't quite tell.

"Are you alright?" Gaara paused in his narration. "Should I stop?" he asked, maybe this had been a bad choice after all.

He watched as she shook her head and made a gesture for him that he interpreted as a request to keep going.

"Alright then..." Gaara said, and he continued, "...and particularly Opuntia or prickly pear. Infection results in a rather moist..."

Over in room 208 Aiynuur was having trouble holding in her laughter. Who was this man? Why would he choose such material, was it punishment because she had destroyed his plants? Was he mocking her for having asked him, a man with clearly much more important things to do, to do this for her? Or was this just what he truly liked reading?

She sighed and lay back on the naked mattress, listening to the sound of his low, soft voice coming over the speaker. At least it was good...to hear his voice...anyone's voice. It was a little like not being alone. If it meant that she had to learn about how to diagnose the pink corpuscles of the Mammillaria, Aiynuur supposed she could suffer through it. She had suffered worse, so much worse.

Gaara's voice returned the next day and informed her that he would visit her tomorrow with some of the other things she asked for, and that also two his people would be present to set up a sort of meeting room for them - somewhere that they could communicate with each other, since the current arrangement was only one way.

He would be present, and she was not to approach his people while they did their work. She nodded her silent consent to the camera. That evening together they learned all about Cotton Root Rot and Scorch or Sunscald.

On the third day, the tickle at the back of her neck that signalled his presence above had interrupted her exploration of the largest suite of sleeping rooms yet. There were no cameras in these rooms, and it had light switches, not automated lights like most other areas. The set of rooms, 6 in total were well-appointed, at least compared to the Spartan rooms where she resided.

As she felt him enter the compound, she resisted the instinctual urge to cloak herself, and allowed him this time to approach her. His energy felt calm and meditative as he approached, which was helpful. It was hard enough to suppress her desire to hide, but she endeavoured to present herself as collected to him.

Aiynuur was using a rag to clean off the dusty glass frame of the only piece of artwork in the main living space of the suite, indeed, the only artwork that she had found in the entire compound when she heard his knock at the door.

"Okairinasai, Gaara-sama," she said, loud enough for him to hear her through the door.

He entered and saw her dusting off the glass of a painting that bore his family's crest. Somehow, he had come upon her just as she had reached what had been intended as the Kage's apartment in the underground bunker. She turned to him and frowned, her brows knit in confusion.

"You don't...feel right," Aiynuur said, finally.

"What do you mean?" Gaara asked.

"You...aren't really him are you? You are one of the...half men?" she asked.

He was surprised she had noticed - his Sand Clones had enough chakra that the fact that they were clones was indiscernible to any but the most elite opponents, or the people who knew him best. She seemed to see the world in chakra in a way that others did not.

"Half man ? That's true in a way I guess...This is a Sand Clone, I have other business to attend to currently, and so I sent this projection along. Any interactions you have with this clone in time I will eventually know. My technicians are currently setting up our conference room on the 2nd floor. I will wait with you until they are done, and then you and I will talk. With the equipment they are adding, I will be able to hear and speak with you in real-time."

"Alright," she said. "Well, show me the things you've brought me in the meantime," Aiynuur instructed with a sly smile.

Him, or the clone of him, as it called itself, brought her back upstairs to her room, where it had deposited a metal case in her room. She popped the lid and inspected what was there. There were two sets of clothes, one a matching ensemble in a pale peach colour, the other a dark blue, and a clock whose satisfying tick she could hear before she even saw it. Aiynuur lifted the clock up to her ear and smiled.

"Is this set to the right time already?" she asked, her ear still to the glass.

He nodded, bemused by her enchantment with such a simple appliance.

She read it. The clock read 7 o'clock. "AM or PM?"

"PM," he replied, surprised that she was so out of touch with day or night. But down here, there was no sun for reference.

Aiynuur took the clothing out of the box and lay it on her bed, and then noticed a hair brush and what looked like a long red two-tined pin at the bottom of the case where the clothing had lain. She lifted it up and held it over to him for inspection. "What is this?" Aiynuur asked.

"It's a hair pin," the clone replied.

"Oh, okay...I'd like to change please, would you mind?"

He nodded and closed the door behind him. A few minutes later he heard the click of the door opening again. It was good to see her out of scrubs. The light peach colour of the garment she wore brought some colour to her face. Aiynuur was beginning to look a lot less like a half-starved wild thing, and more like a woman. It was good to see the positive transformation, and he knew that his real self would find satisfaction in it as well when later they rejoined.

"Hey...Do you know how this thing works?" Aiynuur asked softly, holding the hair pin and looking up at him. "I can't seem to get it to stay in my hair. There must be a trick to it."

Gaara's clone glanced down at her...it was funny that she was asking him for beauty advice of all people, but after all, he had given it to her. He knew that Gaara had made the selection because Temari, his sister, had used one once for a formal occasion, and, as it happened, he had seen her take her hair out and re-pin it again. There was a sort of trick to it.

"Sure," the clone said, thinking about exactly how what was about to happen would play out in the real Gaara's head later on. "I think I can show you."

The woman and his clone had barely entered the frame of the meeting room's camera. It was in a common space on the second floor that Migime and Hidarime had set up the two-way coms.

Gaara was back at Lookout, having been occupied for the past 12 hours with catching up on the business of the village, while his office was being cleared out and rebuilt. In his private room at the Lookout he had Migime, Hidarime, and two other advisers - the Doctor Uta, and his brother Kankuro were present. Kankuro, one of the few he would trust with the full truth of this thwart situation, was up to speed. Uta knew no more about their interaction than she had the last time they spoke at his office, except what she had gleaned so far from the labs.

He wanted them there for this second interview because Gaara was concerned about his own judgement in this case. He didn't want any misplaced sense of sympathy on his part to jeopardize the safety of the city. Gaara also wanted to see what Uta thought of the woman's apparent ability to heal herself.

From the angle of the camera, they could only see on the monitor that she and the clone were standing just outside the door. Her back was to him and the clone stood beyond her, facing the door. He watched in surprise as she beckoned the clone to lean down, so that she could say something in his ear. Despite the new two-way coms Gaara couldn't make out what she said, and knew that he wouldn't be able to until his clone resolved itself and disappeared.

Aiynuur left the clone at the door and sat on a chair at the small table, where the microphone was and where the camera got a clean shot of her. She was wearing the clothes and the hair pin he had given her. Even through the black and white feed she looked...much better.

Gaara felt the familiar rush as his clone dissolved and his missing chakra uploaded itself back into his body. He couldn't disguise the sharp intake of his breath as the memories of what had just happened between her and the clone sped through his mind. Startled, he was surprised to recall the feeling of her soft dark hair in his hands and the look of the bare patch of skin at the back of her neck as he helped her with the hair pin he had gifted her.

He also remembered the words she had whispered to his clone just a few moments before. "Thank you for treating me almost like a person," Aiynuur had said.

"No matter what happens next during this conversation, I just wanted to say...thanks. And if you want to still read to me again - after the things I know I'm going to say to you today - please, nothing about plants, okay?" She paused for a moment, as if considering her next move, and then with a sad sort of smile, she stood on her toes and brushed his cheek with a quick kiss.

As these moments slotted into place, Gaara turned quickly to face the wall to settle himself. He smoothed his hands over his crisp black shirt as if to rub away the feeling of her hair in his hands.

He made a quick decision based on this new input and asked Migime and Hidarime to leave. If anyone would see him discomposed - let it be one of his trusted advisers and his brother. He was unsure how the rest of this conversation would unfold. Apparently, she was capable of anything. Apparently with her he was capable of anything, too. Migime and Hidarime left without comment. It wasn't uncommon for Gaara to ask them to do so. Being in charge was all about the management of secrets.

Once they left, Gaara turned to Uta and Kankuro and said, "I'd like you to watch and listen to Aiynuur-san. I'd like you to try to hear the things between the words she says. I'd like your help understanding the full scope of this situation. Soon I will make a determination about what to do with her."

Kankuro nodded, both intrigued and amused to see what for Gaara was a flustered state. Uta might be unaware of it, but his brother could read the inscrutable man better than almost anyone else. Gaara sat down at the console in front of the monitors. He made a hand signal to both of them to stay quiet and flipped on the com line.

"Good evening, Aiynuur-san. Are you well?" Gaara asked.

"Yes, Gaara-sama. It's good to hear your voice again," Aiynuur said, the content of her words was warm, but not their emotion. Her manner was strangely cold and detached, considering the moment that they had just shared. Her guard was back up.

"I have a few other questions I would like to ask you," Gaara continued.

"I will answer if I can," the woman responded looking directly at the camera.

"The injury on your arm. I would like to talk about it. It appears to be healed," Gaara said, glancing at Uta-sensei.

"Yes, it is," Aiynuur said, without elaborating further.

"How did that come about?" Gaara asked.

Instead of replying immediately, she began to fidget uncomfortably with the tight stone cuffs that were still at her wrists. They were a part of his fall back plan were the woman to try to escape again.

"The bracelets...do they bother you? I could loosen them," he said.

"Ah..." Aiynuur laughed, bitterly, looking up at the camera again. "Listen to you...How cute you are...pretending like I'm a guest...and these are...gifts."

"You could be..." Gaara continued, still bemused by her sudden shift in tone since her exchange with his clone. "You could be...something more like a guest if you comply."

"Comply," Aiynuur laughed at the word. "Have you thought more about what I asked for Kazekage-sama? Have you thought more about my warning?"

"Yes," Gaara continued, frustrated with her obstinacy. "And that's why I want to know more. Tell me about your arm."

"Yes, I did heal it. That's obvious," Aiynuur replied sharply.

"And your scars though?" Gaara asked, finally getting the chance to pose a question that had looped through his mind over the last two days, while they learned about the healing of plants together. "If you can heal yourself, why not heal them?"

"Ha - well, there are no bikini competitions in hell, as it turns out," Aiynuur quipped, her words tipped with acid.

"Perhaps..." Gaara said, choosing to disregard her sarcasm. "But why?"

"Well, there are two reasons really," Aiynuur sighed. She closed her eyes and felt the cold moisture slip down her cheek. Was she sad? Inside she only felt empty.

"The first reason is that...the knowledge of healing came to me...much later," she replied. "And even if I had that knowledge - the scars. They became a way to mark the time, didn't they? I couldn't mark the time by the day or night, or by calendar, or clock."

"But each was a milestone marked in my body, a set point in my mind that I could hang on to... Would you like me to tell you about the man who gave them to me, Kazekage-sama? Would you like to know about how he locked me up in a place just like this one? About how he cut me while my eyes could still see, just to see what would happen? I can start by telling you about the scar just below my neck..."

"Stop!" Gaara replied. The hand that stabbed the com button shook. Why did he ask her to stop? Wasn't this information he could use?

"Does this make you uncomfortable?" Aiynuur demanded. "Does it...hurt you to know that you're doing to me what he did? What they did? Locking me up? Putting me under the dark? Using me? Stealing little parts of me each time we speak to dissect in your lab, each time your Doctors visit? Does it bother you to know that you are that sort of man?"

His anger tore through him. Gaara punched the com again, and said as levelly as he could, "If you're looking for a crack in me, you won't find it." But she already had, hadn't she? So, this was it, so this was why she had let him get close to her - she was testing him, and he was testing her.

"There's always a crack - Kazekage-sama. Always," Aiynuur replied forcefully. "If there's one thing that he taught me it was that. And despite your...façade and your aura like a ton of electric concrete...I can tell that you are...kind, after all," she said sadly.

Gaara turned the Lookout's com off again, and sat back, lost in his thoughts. Finally, Kankuro cleared his throat and brought him back to the room where he and Uta were waiting for him.

"Well, what do you think?" Gaara asked, finally.

"She seems like...a real piece of work, doesn't she?" Uta said cautiously. She had the emotional intelligence to see how tightly this woman had wound the normally immutable Kage. Manipulating the man into any emotion was a remarkable feat, and Uta had seen this woman do it deftly, right before her eyes.

"The labs?" Gaara asked, more calmly this time.

"Inconclusive," Uta responded. "Her blood pressure is low, her body temp is high, but other than that they seem normal, but we're working on a gene sequence."

"When you're done with those samples, have all that remains sent back to the lab in the Tower," Gaara asked. "Uta-sensei, you may go. Thank you."

The grey-haired kunoichi bowed and left quickly.

That still left Kankuro - Gaara was already dreading what he was about to say.

"Well? Do you think she's telling the truth?" Gaara asked, as he swept unto the floor a swath of chip crumbs Hidarime had left on the console with a look of annoyance.

Kankuro shrugged and looked down at his brother through corner of his eyes. "She may be...either way, she seems pretty damaged, doesn't she, Gaara?"

I was damaged once, Gaara thought.

"What would you do in my place?" Gaara asked instead.

"Well," Kankuro began. "As you told me, the Grass have not contacted us yet. They may not know that she's here. They may not know she's alive. What's more - it seems to me that they would not want to acknowledge that they've been conducting any experiments like this. Growing and moulding someone with regenerative powers, chakra perception and control over other organism's chakra like this? Well that's a secret they'd do anything to deny, wouldn't they? At least until they perfected it."

"It reminds me of something from the time of Orichimaru and Kimimaro, doesn't it?" Kankuro continued. "Kabuto may supposedly be reformed now but...how thoroughly was that data destroyed? Something like Kimimaro or that thing he turned himself into walking again. Now, that's a spectre to keep you awake at night, isn't it?" Kankuro looked back down at his brother, who had shifted his to gaze back at the woman who was now pacing in the conference room over at the Bunker. They both watched as she glared at the camera and left the room, apparently sick of waiting for his return to the conversation.

"I know something else, brother," Kankuro said, measuring how these next words might fall on him. "You caught feels..."

Gaara exhaled sharply but didn't outright deny it. Kankuro watched his normally composed brother brush his cheek with his fingertips.

"Look...I know that one of the reasons you brought me here was because I can be more objective than you... If your empathy has compromised your judgement. Here's my objective assessment of the situation. This woman, Aiynuur, as you call her. She's messed up mentally, but she doesn't appear to have any malicious intentions towards you, or us, or the village currently," Kankuro explained. "Considering how we have her locked up, that verges on saintly."

"However, she was someone's experiment, and she escaped. She escaped, and no one has come directly after her. Which means her escape was likely terminal for her captors. Now, her particular abilities are clearly not ones that we can allow the Grass to recover, or anyone else to exploit. So, it seems to me, that provided there are no other escape attempts or slip ups, that she stays in deep storage. Locked up. Out of sight. Unable to hurt herself, or others."

"In the meantime, let Uta-sensei do what she does. This woman doesn't trust us with her secrets - and if they are that terrible. If she is capable of the kind of destruction that she's alluded to as you say, I can't say I blame her. And...I find it interesting that she should care about hurting anyone else - if she were only out for power, she would embrace that ability, wouldn't she? Perhaps this is a curse that she doesn't want and didn't ask for. Maybe it's something you could help break."

"Yes - maybe," Gaara said. "Maybe we could help her do that," Gaara said as if to himself. But then Gaara also thought not for the first time what it would mean for his village to be able to unlock a power like that. And he was suddenly thankful for the strength of their current position - the temptation this type of power invited, these were the sort of thoughts that had inspired his father, Rasa, to seal the Shukaku into him before he was even born.

"Thank you, Kankuro," Gaara said.

Kankuro clapped his hand on his brother's shoulder, and said, "Of course - look. If you find that you need a gut check again about this situation, you let me know. I care for the Village, but I care for you too, brother. I'm here to help you, whatever that may mean."

Kankuro chuckled as he walked towards the door. "In the meantime have fun looking after your new pet cactus, Gaara."

* * *

Aiynuur was shocked to hear the sibilant squeak of the PA system as it came online again the next day. It was around 10 pm in the evening, about the same time that he had read her from his cactus handbook before. Was he really going to keep doing this? After all the things she hateful things she had said to him?

"Aiynuur-san? Are you asleep? I have a new book for you. Come to the meeting room if you'd like me to read you something," Gaara instructed.

Curious, and if she were honest with herself, pleased to hear his voice again, Aiynuur squashed her desire to dash over to the meeting room. She knew he was watching, and she didn't want to betray her eagerness to hear his voice. She walked sedately in the direction of the conference room and entered it. She sat down on the chair in front of the microphone and folded her legs up, resting her chin on her knees. She said nothing to him and simply waited.

"Shall I begin?" he asked.

Aiynuur nodded.

"I have something new for you tonight...it's some of my favourite poetry, written several centuries ago by a Suna poet and mystic. Here goes..."

"The Guest House"

This being human is a guest house.  
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,  
some momentary awareness comes  
As an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!  
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,  
who violently sweep your house  
empty of its furniture,  
still treat each guest honourably.  
He may be clearing you out  
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,  
meet them at the door laughing,  
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,  
because each has been sent  
as a guide from beyond."

Gaara waited for a bit to let the words breathe. Finally, Aiynuur looked up and said, "Thank you, that was lovely. Much better than learning about sebaceous rust," she teased him with a smile.

"Good," Gaara smiled back, although she could not see him, glad that she appreciated something he enjoyed so much. "Shall I read you some more?" he asked.

"Yes," Aiynuur replied.

Gaara continued reading to her for awhile, pausing after each poem only to flip through the pages and find something appropriate to read to her. He had forgotten how much love poetry this author wrote. Finally, as he shuffled through the pages again, Aiynuur interrupted him.

"I can hear you turning the pages a bunch over the line - you're skipping a lot of things, aren't you? Why?" Aiynuur asked.

"I'm just trying to find you something...suitable," Gaara replied, his mouth suddenly dry. He swallowed.

"Read me an unsuitable one," Aiynuur said. Looking up at the camera she continued. "I dare you. Read me whatever's on the next page. No matter what it is."

"Fine," Gaara chuckled, wishing he could remember which poem came next. He turned the page and glanced at the next few lines and sighed. "Well, you asked," he warned her.

"Some Kisses We Want," he began.

"There is some kiss we want with  
our whole lives, the touch of  
spirit on the body.

Seawater begs the pearl  
to break its shell.  
And the lily, how passionately  
it needs some wild darling!

At night, I open the window and ask  
the moon to come and press its  
face against mine. Breathe into  
me. Close the language-door and  
open the love window. The moon  
won't use the door, only the window."

He could barely hear the sound of his own voice over his heart beat as he finished the last line. He swallowed again. Gaara could see her over the video link, and he wished so intensely that the resolution on the old feed were better so he could see her expression. Finally she stood and looked at the camera.

"Thank you, Gaara-sama. That was...fun...I'd like to do this again," she said.

"Yes, I'd like that too. Goodnight, Aiynuur," Gaara replied. He flipped off the com and watched her through the video feeds as she retreated to her room. With his finger he traced the outline of his lips.

A few days had passed since they had read Rumi together. After reading to her about the kiss, he hadn't dared to bring Rumi to their next reading and brought some poetry about nature instead.

Aiynuur had brought a number of blankets and lay curled up like a cat on the table in their meeting room. She seemed to enjoy his readings, she came back every night when he called her, yet she stayed mostly silent during their time together. Aiynuur hadn't mentioned anything about missing Rumi, and he couldn't help but wonder if she did.

"Aiynuur-san, what are you thinking? Gaara finally asked.

"Hmm?" Aiynuur said drowsily, putting her head upon her hand. "I wish I had something to read to you in return. Our arrangement seems unfair," she said, playing with her hair with the tips of her fingers. "You know, I found an instruction manual for the PA system in a closet. Maybe I can bring that tomorrow?" Aiynuur chided.

"Ah, that sounds about as fun as The Suna Plant Disease Handbook," Gaara joked. He was pleased that she seemed to be pleased with their arrangement, but he was also...uncomfortable. What he was doing was wrong. He knew of plenty of instances where people held captive developed an attachment to their captors. The bald truth was that ultimately he was not her friend. He could not be her friend, in his position.

At best he was a prison keeper with a job to do, even if that job of keeping her underground might at the moment be in their mutual best interest. Regardless, it was a deal she had certainly not consented to. He had taken her freedom away, and at the moment giving it back seemed not to be an option. And so Gaara discovered himself pinned between the unexpected joy of his strange connection with her and the knowledge that the balance between them was so unforgivably twisted. It sickened him. And yet, here he was.

Aiynuur should despise him, and maybe inside herself, she did. But she showed a distressing knack for being able to compartmentalize those parts of him that hurt her, perhaps so she could extract those things that she needed like sunlight - companionship. No human could stand to be alone. Not if they could help it. Not even if that other person hurt them.

And it seemed she had spent much time that way, alone, as he once had. "Thanks for treating me almost like a person," she had said to his clone before their first interview over the comms. "Almost like a person," the words sat in his stomach like a stone. Truly what he was doing was unfair, selfish even, and yet, here he was, reading her poetry like a friend, or something even worse a lover, maybe? Perhaps it was good then that he would be leaving tomorrow for the twice-yearly Chuunin exam.

"Aiynuur-san," Gaara said. "Let's leave it at that for the night. I want to let you know that I will send someone by tomorrow to give you some provisions, and some books," he watched her face as he disclosed this, thinking that he saw a frown there on the screen at this admission. He was expecting a happier reaction at his show of trust. He was giving her yet one more thing that she had asked for.

"Are you going somewhere, or are you...just sick of reading me bedtime stories?" Aiynuur asked, her voice strained.

"I am going on a trip," Gaara replied, "...And about the books. Maybe you can find something you'd want to read to me when I return. I'll be away for a week."

"Alright. Yes, I'm sure I can find something suitable for you, with enough material," she replied. "A week?" she asked.

"Just a week," he confirmed.

"Travel safely then, Gaara-sama."


	6. Chapter 6

Gaara kept his eyes focused firmly on the horizon. When he did the queasiness from the rocking of the boat, and the discomfort over the fact that he was so far from dry land bothered him less. Of course he had known going into the second bi-annual Chuunin exam of the year that it would be hosted by the Hidden Village of the Mist. Somehow knowing intellectually never truly prepared him for the discomfort that being surrounded by water gave to him.

On the islands of Kiragakure, he was fine, but adrift on the sea on the way to and from - that was another matter. He had debated about manifesting the larger form of his chakra-infused gourd, but aware of appearances, he knew that any such larger accessory would be noted. At best his bringing a larger defence would be seen as a sign of either mistrust in his fellow 5 Kage's or in the Mizukage's ability to keep his guests safe. At worst it would be interpreted as the above insult, and as a sign of weakness. And so he had brought the smaller gourd he had worn for the past 8 years, slung at his left hip, as if being away from his element were nothing at all to him.

And on all the past occasions he had attended the Chuunin exam, which now rotated each time it was held to a different location among the 5 nations, nothing at all had happened. Of course, that didn't mean that there wasn't a hold full of sand weighing down his own personal vessel. A Kage didn't stay a Kage for long without a healthy penchant of paranoia. Although his boat was in tow, that sand was not terribly accessible here on the main cruise ship, which was currently headed towards the now cleared and recently reclaimed Summoning Island where the latest exams were to be held.

Gaara's nerves were in no way helped by nature of the large barge they were on either, for that matter. Before he boarded the ship, he was greeted by Mei Terumi, now gleefully engaged; who retired from her former position as Mizukage, was acting as tourism director for Kiragakure. Gaara suspected that the garish pleasure boat he and his fellow Kages were on in part a ploy to wow them and their accompanying delegations with the extravagance they could experience aboard one of these ships during a vacation abroad. He wouldn't be surprised if he got a pitch to join a soon to be constructed time share on Summoning Island as soon as they all landed.

It was insufferable to say the least. And it wasn't helped by the other company on the boat. The Chuunin, administrators, and support staff from each participating village were aboard their own respective fleet ships. However, the big wigs, including the Kages, had been asked to stay aboard the cruise liner. In a brooch of usual protocol, many of the Daimyo, and other respective leaders and corporate and syndicate bosses of major and minor nations were there as well. Typically these civilian groups would not join the exams until they were at their final observational stage, where the best of the best Chuunin could be pitted against each other, and betting on the outcomes could also be done from the comfort of luxury boxes above the arena.

These power brokers had all been lured to join the procession ahead of time with promises of extravagant entertainment, feasts, games and even negotiable affection on the cruise and on the Island when they arrived at the newly built facilities there. Although this might sound like fun to many, even the more sober among the Kages, it meant that Gaara was assaulted by the sounds of drunk revellers, and the sight of pale, bloated, self-important men sun bathing on the cruise deck any time he ventured outside his rooms.

Opting to make the best of a bad situation, he and most of his retinue were holed up in the large suite appointed to him, where he had made it known that any of the Daimyos or other leaders could seek Suna's hospitality and an audience with him if they'd like to learn more about what the Village had to offer, or to discuss potential or current business concerns. So far some had taken him up on the invitation, so things weren't a total wash.

He was sitting in his floridly decorated reception room drinking hot tea when he heard the sound of the outer chamber door pop open with a bang. His nerves electrified by the sound, he immediately stood and readied himself to confront one of his worst fears - attack on the open water, when he heard a familiar voice through the door.

"Oy, Gaara! Are you going to hide in there all day?"

Relief and happiness at the sound of Uzumaki Naruto's voice flooded over him, and he quickly reclaimed his composure as Naruto slammed open the reception room door without knocking.

"I knew you were sitting here alone, I could feel it - let's go get some lunch! You know all this stuff is free, right?" The tall blond man chattered at him happily.

Behind Naruto; Gaara caught sight of two of his five guards, red-faced and bowing to him furiously for being unable to stem the tsunami of Uzumaki as he barged into the suite. Gaara gave them a wave dismissing them. Naruto's friendliness was an assault that even Sabaku no Hyotan Oji had been unable to resist - a fact that he was eternally grateful for.

"It's good to see you again, old friend," Gaara smiled.

Naruto clapped a hand heavily on his shoulder.

"You, too! Hey, why have you been hiding away in here? This place is great! Well, besides the pervy old men, but other than that, great! Have you been to the dining room yet? It's amazing!"

Gaara shook his head no, trying to silently intimate to his friend with his frown how repellent he found this place.

"Oh, come on," Naruto said, picking up on queues that in his youth would have been eclipsed by his own personal enthusiasm. "It's not that bad! Plus, there's a Tsukeman broth fountain! You'll love it if you relax a little. The Raikage and B are waiting for us in the dining room already."

"Alright," Gaara chuckled, "But I hope B is hungry enough not to be rhyming at use the whole time..."

"It'll be fine! Hey, Gaara, I heard that you got attacked by a Cactus Woman in your own office in Suna! What's up with that?"

Gaara cringed. The rumor-mill in Suna was connected closely to its sister city in Kona, the incident with Aiynuur was bound to reach the ears of all the other Kages, including Naruto. Although assassination attempts were fewer than they were in the past age, they were not unheard of. Cactus Woman? It was always amusing to see how rumours mutated as they spread further away from their origin.

"Ha...it wasn't quite what it seems, if you don't mind sitting down for some tea privately later to talk about it, I would like to ask a personal favour of you," Gaara said.

Naruto nodded, his blue eyes suddenly clear and serious. Gaara was not the type to ask for favours lightly. "Sure, of course. I'll help out if I can," Naruto said.

"It's about Kabuto-san, actually. Who I understand still lives in Konoha," Gaara explained.

"Kabuto-san?" Naruto asked.

The Chuunin exams had been a success, with 8 of the 11 Suna participants advancing to Genin, and several promising leads on lucrative contracts. Gaara reflected on the past few days as he stared out over the ink black water of night on the return trip of the cruise liner. What's more, he had to admit that even he had grown to enjoy the charms of the subtropical island while he was there - there were exotic fruits to enjoy and plants to see, and, of course, always a comfort away from home - sandy beaches.

Gaara felt surprisingly relaxed as he watched the moon float on the horizon. He thought again of Aiynuur, and what she must be feeling right now, locked away by herself. Guilt pulled at him. He had brought back a bushel of some of the exotic fruits they collected on the island for her.

As soon as he showed interest Mei was more than happy to supply him with the fruit, promising still more to be shipped to Suna if he'd like. Mei seemed satisfied by this development, having finally won over her most cynical guest. Gaara wasn't sure if he would give the fruits to Aiynuur or not yet. He'd like to. His trust for her though was still so untried, but he realized that he wanted to trust her.

It was a strange feeling for him. To want to trust was to invite vulnerability, after all. It was not that Gaara didn't trust others exactly - he did. But in a funny way. He trusted them, to well, if not betray him, to follow their instincts. To behave if not poorly, selfishly. That was the sort of cynical trust that Gaara held for his fellow man.

Sad perhaps - but, reliable. Besides, he had discovered a strange strength over the years in seeing these flaws, in watching them play out as they did so predictably, and most importantly, in forgiving people for them. Just as he ultimately had forgiven his father Rasa for his flaws, for his pursuit of power over the well-being of his wife, his son and his family. That forgiveness, that compassion was strangely liberating. But the trust that he wanted to share with Aiynuur - it was different.

He found when he was alone his thoughts often strayed to her - what would she think of this experience or that? Would she enjoy the solo hikes up the mountain he took every day like he did? Would she have joined him if he invited her? Would she have asked for his hand to help her as they ascended the steep pathway to the top? They were simple questions, stupid questions. Questions he shouldn't dare to wonder about. But, wasn't he flawed too? Didn't he have the right to be flawed, to want something, just like everybody else?

His reverie was violated by the sound of a group of drunken party-goers spilling out over the moonlit deck only a few feet away from him. Gaara looked on in disgust as several lurching "dignitaries", an even more ironic description than usual in this case, including a few he recognized as leaders of prominent states including Grass stumbled out of the door, accompanied by some of the companions hired to entertain the guests as needed.

Gaara watched in disgust as another drunken man he knew to be from the Country of Grass slipped his hand clumsily in a way he was sure the fool thought was alluring underneath the hem of his female escort's shirt to caress her side as he whispered something in her ear. If she found the idea of his touch as repellent as Gaara did, she did not show it. After all, she was an adult, and this was the job she had accepted, but the sight offended him in a way that it normally would not. Perhaps it was his curious state of emotionality that made it impossible for him to anticipate what happened next.

A tall shadow suddenly coalesced on the other side of the group of dignitaries. The figure - a man's by the shape of it, wore a mask in the shape of a crow's head. His instincts reacting immediately, Gaara bound over the group of revellers, most of whom had not yet registered the intruder and released his chakra infused sand to bind the man. Successfully restraining the first now struggling assailant, Gaara cursed his limited material resources. Sure enough, a second aggressor quickly appeared, this one wearing a horned helmet. Gaara realized that the mere incapacitation of the first man was not an option as the second figure stepped forward to grapple with him.

As he felt his sand methodically crush the life from the first man and shift to meet his new pursuer Gaara watched as other Shinobi he recognized as guards of Mizukagure finally appeared to assist him in his defence of the civilians. The attackers, now numbering 5 if you included the one Gaara had already dispatched grew tense. Had they not expected a quick and devastating response attacking a ship full of elite nin?

"Sarutomi!" He heard one of them cry.

Gaara watched in horror as a sixth attacker leaped like a vengeful shadow in a graceful arc into a vulnerable area free of defenders right between Gaara and the group of gibbering dignitaries. He watched in horror as the fluttering of the attacker's robes as she descended revealed the tags of dozens of undetonated bomb papers. It was suddenly clear what this group had intended - an attack with no survivors, not even them. A suicide mission.

Regretting again his lack of resources Gaara had time and sand enough only to partially contain her, and shield the group of civilians before the tags ignited. The world was suddenly terribly and briefly bright. There was no pain. There was no time for pain to register.

If he'd been present to hear it, he would have heard Naruto cry his name as his body was thrown violently back and over the side of the ship. If he'd been present to feel it, he would have remembered how the dark water didn't open to accept him - his body hit it with a force as surely as any solid wall, before it was finally accepted by the stinging embrace of the sea.


	7. Chapter 7

Plant sit. That's what Gaara had asked Kankuro to do before he left. They had stood in the courtyard at the private entrance of the Kage's tower. His younger brother was dressed for travel in his formal Kazekage attire of white robes and wide green hat. The mask over the lower half of Gaara's face was, as he well knew, not only to add to the intimidating appearance of the Kage, but also to conceal his word shapes - so that his lips could not be read while the Kage was out in foreign lands.

"Kankuro, I'd like to ask you a favour," Gaara's muffled voice asked quietly as his retinue packed up the caravan behind them.

Kankuro drew closer, while keeping his gaze casually drawn to the activity of the valets.

"I'd like you to plant sit for me while I'm away," Gaara said.

Kankuro nodded. "I understand - you're concerned about your newest one?"

"Yes," Gaara replied. "I have someone to take care of the others. But that one needs special attention. Please check in on it. I have set aside some supplies already for this purpose."

"Of course," Kankuro replied, touched that his brother would trust him with what he suspected was a personal charge.

They had let it be known unofficially that the woman who had attacked him in his own office had been dealt with - definitively. Which was a course of action that was not exceptional in this case, since the presumed crime was an assassination attempt, and her affiliation with the country of Grass had been explained away as an unsanctioned gambit by a deranged rogue nin to incite discord between the two nations.

And so Kankuro had checked in on the woman his brother had named Aiynuur. She had developed a sort of routine of rising early, running circuits through the long hallways on each floor, and then doing exercises. Then she would breakfast as she read. She had apparently opened every room in the Bunker now, including the monitoring room, which had video feeds to the outside as well as the inside. Megime and Hedarime asked Kankuro if they should cut the feeds, which included one at the door and one trained on the surrounding valley.

Kankuro replied no, not unless she seemed to be exploiting it for some reason. He had to admit he found her a bit pitiful - this small, pale, lonely woman in a box. The idea of robbing her of her view of the outside seemed cruel, especially when he heard that she began to spend long hours curled up, staring at the desert feed, a book in her hand, as if she were bored, or waiting for something. Gaara perhaps? Who could say.

He dropped off supplies for her while she was likely asleep twice, once at the start of Gaara's trip, and once again at the end of the week. It was the night before they got the news of the attack - the attack that marked the end and the beginning of so many things.

His lifeless body had looked so different, after the Akatsuki had stolen and sealed away the Shukaku, she reflected. It had been pale and unmarked - like a porcelain doll or one of Chiyo-baasama's perfectly constructed puppets. That was one of the things that strangers noticed first about Gaara when they were young, she remembered - that for a nin even of that young age, he didn't have a scratch on him. How that had changed now. But unlike the time before, there was still life in this body, and to Temari, that was what mattered.

She stood now where she had stood with Uzumaki Naruto just a few nights ago, overlooking Gaara's sleeping form in the private medical suite in the Kazekage's Tower. Naruto had insisted on accompanying Gaara to Sunagakure, much to the chagrin of the higher-ups in the Suna travelling party. The Hokage's paternalistic presence there as Gaara's escort and rescuer did not help the self-image of some of the more insecure elites in Suna.

But those concerned about image could at least be satisfied that it was Gaara's and therefore Suna's heroic actions that had saved the lives of the civilians on the ship's deck that night, and the rich men that Gaara had sacrificed himself to save knew that. The gifts, well-wishes, and even contracts from the more contrite among them were already pouring in, as if any of those things could be enough.

After ensuring that Gaara was safely in the hands of his family, Naruto had left quickly to return to Konoha and try to get to the bottom of who the attackers were, and who specifically this attack had been focused on in the hopes that other potential terrorists could be apprehended. Before leaving, Temari and Naruto agreed that both nations would share information with one another freely about what they found, and that Nara Shikamaru would serve as agent between them. The attack had not likely been directed at Gaara. It seemed that someone among the group of drunk worthless wastrels was the likely target.

Temari thought on the type of men who Gaara had injured himself so severely to protect. Her brother was worth a 1,000 of them, she thought bitterly. But, that was the price of the game they played. They weren't warriors or saints, policemen or dog-catchers, they were ninjas - weapons for hire. And moral codes they had, but ultimately money was the means of their survival, and the survival of all those who were precious to them.

Few knew the truth, that Gaara's injuries were this bad. It was at vulnerable moments like this one that opportunists often struck, and the fact that Gaara did not have an appointed heir only compounded the potential chaos. And so although it was known that the Kazekage had been injured rescuing many powerful people from a blast likely meant for one of them, she and the few who knew had been taking pains to create appearances that he was up and about, on the mend, if slowly.

Kankuro was key to their subterfuge at the moment, using his Kugutsu to make it seem, at least from a far, that Gaara was up and recuperating in his personal apartment that overlooked his greenhouses. That puppet show would have to be enough for now. Compounding the intensity of the situation for Temari was the fact that she and Shikamaru had planned to be wed within the month.

It was going to be a small, simple affair, but she and Nara had been making plans for over half a year now. Well, she had been making plans. Nara was prudent enough to agree to her vision in most respects, although she suspected that he wanted to make a bigger deal out of it than she was willing to. She knew it probably hurt him. She knew it probably felt like she was hiding their love away, but the eyes of the Village were always on her back. Temari knew well that many resented their match.

But Gaara's injury had interrupted their pending nuptials for several reasons, among them her need to focus on caring for her brother right now, and furthermore the question of succession. Sunagakure was more conservative and patriarchal than many nations when it came to succession - the fact that she and a man from Konoha should wed already upset many, and now their marriage took on a new dimension of risk for the oligarchy.

As Gaara had no heir, historical precedent left her to rule as regent until a new male heir was appointed (god forbid a person with ovaries rule as Kage...). The other obvious option was Kankuro. But Kankuro had long made it loudly clear that his only interest in leadership was to support his brother as Kage. If she were to serve as regent, her marriage to Shikamaru would have to be delayed indefinitely.

Married, the Nara clan's perceived influence on her, as well as their potential succession would be interpreted as an unacceptable risk to the elite. Shikamaru had deduced this outcome the moment Temari explained to him in private the truth about Gaara's state. He had accepted it levelly - too levelly, really. Although she knew he held his feelings in check for her.

Sometimes the man she had fallen in love with was too cool, Temari reflected. He soothed when she wanted him to seethe. He flowed when she wanted him to snap. She had been so angry with him for not being angry with her. She yelled and she cried, and then after she had exhausted her tears, he held her. "It can't be helped," was all he said. And the bitch of it all is, he was right. At the end of the day, she wanted to him to be so unreasonable - so she could be so angry, so she could feel anything but this...helplessness.

As she watched, Gaara's eyes opened just a crack. Temari stepped forward and gently held Gaara's unburned hand in her own.

"Rest, your first surgery will be tomorrow," Temari said, squeezing his hand gently.

Gaara nodded almost imperceptibly beneath the mask he wore, squeezing her hand weakly in return before closing his eyes once again.

Temari left the room quietly. In the hallway beyond, the punishing clack of her heals on the terrazzo were the only expression of the tumult inside of her that she allowed herself to have.

Four weeks – one week had become four weeks. 28 days, 12 hours, 30-odd minutes. Nothing. No word. No letter. No squeak and fizzle of the PA system before his voice or any voice for that matter. Nothing but one communication-less supply drop-off. The universe was funny, Aiynuur reflected. Funny was a kind way of saying cruel.

Aiynuur had gone from a world where the undifferentiated flow of time suffocated her, abraded her, to a world where each crisp tick of the clock marked a measurement as certain as a foot fall, another second departed from a point in time when she knew some kind of human connection with someone, with somewhere besides the thoughts and shapes inside her own head. For the first time in the life she could remember she wanted to hold on to something, but time was the tide that pulled her away.

And so Aiynuur had hidden the clock with the red hair pin. Yet she found she still strayed to it, to check the clock several times a day. Thank god for the books. He had sent her 33 in total - books of poetry, of botany, biology, history - including a book on astronomy - the stars she couldn't see - and the local myths and legends the people of Suna had about them. There were even a few novels, but Aiynuur couldn't bare to read them. In her current fragile state, reading a novel felt too much like inviting a group of strangers into her head.

One of the first things she'd done with the box of books she received was of course to look for Rumi - the author who's poetry he'd first read to her after she'd expressed her disinterest in The Suna Plant Disease Handbook. After his first reading, and the poem he had ended on, he'd never read her any Rumi again. But she could find no volume, booklet, or mention of the man or his work in anything Gaara had sent her, which disappointed her. What did its absence mean? Did it mean anything at all? The Handbook had been facetiously included. Gaara had even gone so far as to sign the title page, "To Aiynuur, may you never be so desperate as to read this."

But she had now. Twice. And the title page with his inscription she had carefully torn out so that she could stow it in the sleeve of her haori and look at it whenever she needed it. It wasn't just the fact that it was from him - it was also a sort of totem, a talisman to remind to her that she was not in some sort of purgatory all by herself. That there were other people in the world. And all the time she wondered, wondered where he was - where anyone was. What had happened? What had gone wrong? Was he alright? Why had one week became so many? Had she done something wrong?

About four weeks after the start of Gaara's absence, there were a few tense days where she thought she would run out food. She had cleared away the furniture in the comms room and had taken to sleeping and spending much of her downtime between there and the monitor room in the hope that Gaara or someone else would try to connect with her.

Aiynuur had already begun to pro-actively ration what food she had at that point, but so starved for human contact was she that the feeling of the delivery person's chi stung her so hard she cried out when she felt it. She jumped up and ran towards it, wanting badly some sort of answer, but she wasn't fast enough, and to her dismay, the MREs that were there in the antechamber she estimated could last her another four weeks before anyone needed to check in on her again.

Not for the first time, she began to plan for escape. She drew maps from her memory of the area, and created an inventory of things she would take. Aiynuur sewed herself a ruck sack to transport those things in. All of this she did in full view of the camera in the comms room, daring them to say something, daring them to raid the Bunker and lock her up again. But no admonishment or response came.

And then there were the night terrors. In the absence of other stimulation, she found her dream thoughts returning to the place where she had been before - the Farm. And to the conductor of that nightmare - the man that always wore a surgical mask. Gone were dreams of cool evenings spent finding her way under watchful stars. Instead - panic, piercing eyes above that mask, tests, terrible tasks.

To make matters worse Gaara was often there in her mind - as the inviolable and unreadable collared figure from their first meeting. He was not overseeing what was happening to her, not directing it or involved in anyway, but watching, expressionless, judging her, she feared, as the other man systematically broke her apart. She didn't want him to see her in pieces under their hands. She didn't want him to know ultimately what she had done to survive.

Aiynuur woke up sweating from her dreams. The flicker of the automated lights in the comm room where she slept now were once an annoyance, now they were a comfort. At least she never awoke and had to sit there alone with the memory of that shadow, the shadow of that man's outline there in the dark.


	8. Chapter 8

Gaara was awake, truly awake for the first time in a week, and he was communicating. The feeling of relief brought a rush so intense her head swam. Temari had just told Sari the news. She also explained that he was too tired to see her for a briefing at the moment, but there was apparently at least one task he had the energy to request, and Sari was ready to support him, in any way that she could.

"Gaara's lungs are so weak that he's having trouble talking out loud right now," Temari said. "But he can write. Here's the message that Gaara asked me to convey to you," Temari said, pushing a folded note into her hand and before retreating back to Gaara's room.

Sari unfolded the paper carefully and was comforted to see Gaara's characteristic crisp, even script on the page in front of her.

Sari-san, I hope you are well and have not been troubled about me. Tomorrow, plan to visit with me and take notes with Temari present at a quarter to 11. Until then, I have one request. Please reach out to Ms. Mei Terumi. Ask her if she would kindly send straight away to me another box of her wonderful fruit. She will understand this request. Thank you.

"Fruit?" Sari asked aloud to the now empty waiting room.

Aiynuur cried out in frustration that morning the second time her new delivery man slipped from her grasp before she could make catch up to him. It was morning time, and she was up and around on the first floor making her way to the monitor room. Despite how close she was to the entrance, she still only made it as far as the the flight of stairs up to the opening landing before she felt the dim in their chakra that signalled the doorway had been sealed again.

It was frustrating, but the feeling of that presence alone was also a huge relief. It had not been four weeks since the last drop-off - her supplies had not run out. Maybe, just maybe, the shorter than expected interval between drop-offs meant that something had changed. She took the stairs two at a time to the entry chamber where she found a series of new packages which to her surprise appeared to have nothing to do with her usual rations.

She opened one and found inside several pairs of sandals and shoes of various descriptions that looked like they were intended to fit her. Aiynuur cast about for a note and found one pinned to a black zippered bag that lay on top of a stack of boxes. There was no green wax seal this time.

Her heart beating quickly, she unfolded the note and saw the handwriting she recognized as his. She smiled.

 _Dear Aiynuur-san,_

 _I never meant Please accept my apologies for my absence. As Kazekage, I have many responsibilities, and I'm afraid unforeseen events have taken me away these last few weeks._

 _I'd like to express my regret to you, and to give you these small tokens as my way of beginning to make amends. I hope they will please you and go some small way to reassuring you that the treatment you received recently will not be the norm going forward._

 _Some regrettable things have transpired to change my circumstances, and I would like to discuss the matter of a probational asylum here in Sunagakure with you at your soonest convenience. To offer your reply, simply state your desired meeting time to the camera in the comms room and I will make arrangements._

 _Hoping to hear from you soon, please accept my deepest apologies._

 _Gaara_

At your soonest convenience? she thought. You've got to be kidding me. Aiynuur pivoted on her heel and folded the letter as she bound down the four flights of stairs to the second floor. There she ran to the comm room, a tad embarrassed to think that all this time she had continued to be watched through the cam. At least she had never changed in front of it. Smoothing out her shirt nervously she turned to look squarely at the little red light next to the lens of the camera.

"Tonight," she said breathlessly to its bright black eye. "How about tonight? If that works. Uh...thanks," she mumbled awkwardly, unsure if she should wait for a response. She hesitated for a moment before smiling, embarrassed. She nodded at the camera, and turning on her heal to return back the landing where the packages he had sent were waiting.

Tonight. Gaara looked at the note from Megime once again. That didn't leave a lot of time - but he would make it happen. It shouldn't surprise him. After experiencing 4 weeks in what was essentially solitary, anyone would want to be out as soon as possible. Guilt tugged at him again. Guilt and loss. Loss for what might have been. Somehow it was easier to be honest with him about his emotions with respect to her, now that he knew any prospect of a relationship was lost.

Gaara flipped the piece of paper over and thought back on the conversation that he had with his sister two days ago. How do you say you're sorry to a woman? Gaara had asked her.

Temari had blinked a couple of times after she read what he had written, as if she couldn't quite process the question, or perhaps more specifically believe who had asked it. Shikamaru had accompanied Temari to wish him well and Gaara noticed the man's dark eyes dart quickly across the page.

"The same way you do to a man," Temari responded brusquely. "Earnestly, respectfully, directly," she explained.

"Gifts don't hurt either," Shikamaru added. Temari turned and swatted at her fiancé with a smirk.

"Why do you want to know?" Temari asked, turning back to Gaara and eyeing him suspiciously. Thanks to Temari's busyness with her own impending marriage, Gaara had not informed her of Aiynuur's identity, or continued existence for that matter, before the trip to Water Country.

It was apparent that Kankuro had kept the secret from their sister as well over the last few weeks. There had been a lot bigger things going on, after all. How could he explain it to Temari now? It was all too strange and would take too much time, or perhaps he was just unprepared to see her reaction when he did tell her the truth. What would Temari think? Of the three of them, she had always been the most mature and pragmatic. Gaara resolved to tell her later, but first he still needed her help.

He thought back on the original list of things that Aiynuur had asked him for. The fruit Mei had kindly helped with. Perhaps there were other things Aiynuur might like though. He started to write on a fresh sheet of paper.

I will explain the situation in more detail later, he wrote, but I need your assistance with something tomorrow. Please go out and buy some clothing and other things you might give to a woman you want to apologize to. Normally I would not ask you for such a thing, but in my condition I must rely on you. Something that might fit someone the size of Matsuri-san would probably work. I will see that you're you.

"Matsuri-san?" Temari had asked, eyes narrowing as she looked at Gaara. "Sure, we were going to go out for lunch anyway..."

Gaara nodded to Temari from where he sat propped up in bed. As soon as his initial surgeries were complete, Gaara had insisted that he be moved back to his own apartment - which Uta-sensei had protested, and had been a struggle logistically to do covertly.

He was weak yet and still required a machine to help his breathing. His injuries would need require skin grafting and more chakra healing, but Gaara wanted to feel a sense of normalcy, and the sterile environment of the Kage's private surgery in the Tower still felt unfamiliar and cold, despite the many days he had already spent there. The environment was draining.

Gaara now sat in his own bed atop his red coverlet as he wrote. In retrospect he should have been more specific about what sort of gifts were appropriate he reflected - when Shikamaru and Temari returned after their shopping trip Gaara had asked if they might show him what they had bought.

Although he was very thankful that the two had agreed to such a strange request without any argument, the things that they had gotten provided some consternation for him. Maybe he'd been a bit naive about what he was asking for. They had bought clothing - but none of it was what Gaara would call practical. In addition to the clothing and shoes, Nara had added his own helpful additions, based on personal experience, including sweets, perfume and some simple jewellery.

It's all very beautiful, Gaara had told them truthfully. Shikamaru had then complained that Temari hadn't allowed him input on any of the clothing selection.

"He's trying to make amends," Temari rebuked him. "Not start another fight by gifting her something that looks like lingerie, Nara."

"Hmm..." Shikamaru shrugged.

Temari then made Gaara promise again that he would explain what all this was about as soon as he was able. It was clear that the secrecy about his personal life was alarming to his sister, who wasn't used to being kept out of the loop. Or, more truthfully, wasn't used to the idea of there being a loop at all.

Gaara finished jotting down the rest of his list and rang the buzzer he had to contact Sari. Tonight. Gaara thought again. Tonight, if only things could be different. But at least he would have tonight, before Aiynuur had to know the truth.

Why hadn't she told him a specific time? Aiynuur asked herself for what must have been the hundredth time. The anxiety of waiting was killing her. She was sitting in the comm room again where she had eaten her evening meal. She was trying her best to read a book quietly as the clock, whose sentence of banishment had recently been commuted, ticked away the seconds.

6:47 pm it read. Aiynuur was pretty sure it had said the same thing 10 minutes ago. Frustrated, she stood. If she watched the clock any more she'd lose her mind. She thought again of the gifts he had given her as she sat there in the utilitarian navy gi he had given her nearly two months ago.

To say she'd been confused and a little alarmed by the gifts he had sent her was an understatement. She had expected more books, perhaps something fresh to eat for once, but instead she had found some extravagant, and as far as her lifestyle went, pretty useless things like candies, a bottle of perfume oil that smelled like something lovely she didn't recognize, impractical footwear (which she hadn't worn since what was literally time immemorial anyhow), jewellery and...three new dresses.

Everything was very beautiful - it even looked like it might fit her, but it seemed as if it had been bought by someone else for someone else. It was so strange. She folded the things away and left them down in her old room. All day her thoughts returned to those beautiful things though.

Would it be too terrible just to even try them on? Even if they seemed like they belonged to someone else? What if he called on her while she was changing? Aiynuur had waited a month in the darkness to hear from him, she thought. She had endured four weeks of complete silence. He could wait if he needed to, she decided.

Wary of the knowledge that the video feeds were apparently live, Aiynuur walked quickly back to her original room. There she bathed in the coffin-like shower before drying herself off with one of the sheets she'd salvaged from another room for this purpose weeks ago. She brushed out her wet hair and plaited it in a long lose braid.

At least the dresses themselves were lovely, she reflected as she laid them out and looked at them again. If her prison keeper had weird fantasies of seducing his captive - they were surprisingly tasteful ones. She tried the first one on - it was black and had structured shoulders that were sadly just a bit too big for her. The inside of the conservative and crisp black dress was lined with a stark red fabric that would peak through as she moved.

The second dress was a dark maroon colour. It looked like a box before she tried it on, but when she did, it draped from her with a pleasing geometry, going down to her ankles and revealing her lower arms in two wide slits. The last dress though. The last dress she decided was her favourite before she even tried it on.

The fabric was so soft and diaphanous it was almost unreal. If you looked at it one way it looked just like the pale green of the fiddle head ferns she had seen in the forests on her long trek before reaching the desert, but if you shifted the fabric another way it seemed to transform into a darker moss colour. The dress needed no adornment, for its collar was a circlet of gold braid that the fabric flowed down from in waves at the front and the back, leaving her shoulders and arms bare.

Aiynuur put it on carefully. It was so delicate it felt wrong that she should even touch it at first. All the mirrors in the compound were made of stainless steel - reflective, but in a sort of diffuse way. Even so, when she looked at her appearance in the mirror of the small bathroom, she was alarmed by the transformation.

Although psychologically her time below ground in Suna had been a trial, physically she couldn't remember a time when she'd been better. Her hair was glossy and black, her pale skin had no tender patches of fresh flesh where she had healed herself. Although her nights were interrupted by nightmares, those interruptions were far better than the things that produced those hellacious visions in the first place. She looked in the mirror, and for the first time in a long time she saw someone else.

Aiynuur looked in the mirror and wondered for the first time in a long time just who the person looking back at her ought to be. Her past was a wash to her, that had never been an exaggeration - and her time at the Ant Farm was time she'd rather not remember. How old was she? In her late 20's or early 30's perhaps? What had her name been, and where had she come from? Was there anyone, anywhere who was missing this woman, this face right now?

The sudden crackle of the PA system switching on made Aiynuur nearly jump out of her skin.

"Aiynuur-san, won't you join me outside?"

Her throat was suddenly dry. His voice seemed weak, but it was him. It was his voice again, for the first time in six weeks. She didn't know whether to feel happy or angry for all the times she wanted to hear that stupid voice - the low, even tone of her friendly neighbourhood jailer. She looked down at the dress and thought about changing out of it quickly. Aiynuur was surprised to see that the clock read 8:54 pm.

"Aiynuur-san?" the sound of his voice came again, softly, almost pleading.

She looked in the mirror and dried her eyes on the back of her hand. Fuck it. She squared her shoulders and unworked the braid so that her hair fell in long, loose black curls across her back. Aiynuur lifted her chin high and left the room where they'd cuffed her drugged body to the bed not two months ago. She walked barefoot, but she felt like a queen. Aiynuur smiled softly to herself - that was the silver lining about not knowing who you were, you could imagine you were anything. So maybe, just maybe, she had been.

In a small dark room up at the Look Out in Sunagakure, Hedarime forgot about the doughnut he had half dunked in his coffee as he watched the woman that he and Megime now referred to affectionately as "Ai-chan."

"Well," he chuckled to himself. "Here comes trouble."


	9. Chapter 9

Aiynuur wished she had taken the stairs. Now that she was standing still during even the short ride on the elevator she was losing her steam. She looked ridiculous, she felt ridiculous, and besides, what was he thinking giving this to her?

It was all really confusing. Leave someone buried in a hole in the ground for four weeks, then shower them with gifts and dig them up again. That sounded like the play script of a sadist, and Aiynuur was well acquainted with sadists, or at least a certain very specific genre of them. A little voice in the back of her head reminded her that she had detonated his entire office and then kissed his clone on the cheek a few days later. Right. Contradictions. They both maybe had a problem with contradictions.

She took a deep breath, stretching out with her senses as the doors to the landing opened and she exited. Aiynuur paused - was he there? He was, but somehow he seemed far off or muted. She also felt the glimmer of someone else even further away - a lurker, or a sort of chaperon perhaps? She hoped he didn't expect her to take a hike of any distance in this outfit. Damn, she thought, thinking of her bare arms for the first time. This is going to be cold. Her mood was darkening by the second.

Wait, she thought to herself as she stood on the landing. Wasn't this what she wanted? To see him. To feel something like freedom. To talk to someone like a friend. Or was she so twisted and choleric that she couldn't let herself have even that? That she'd prefer to tuck tail and hide in her hole in the ground. No, she thought. Try again. You're afraid girl, you're just afraid. Aiynuur laughed at herself, and stepped forward into the night.

The setting sun's last ring of gold clung to the canyon's spires as she walked forward into the air to meet him. He had built a large brush and cactus wood fire this time to light their meeting and the the flutter of the fire's light coupled with the wind stirring her dress and hair gave her an ethereal appearance, like a mal'ak or djin. The thought of other worldly beings might have seemed strange applied to anyone else he knew but on her it fit. She didn't belong to his world. She couldn't belong to his world. Yet here she was in it. He wondered if she would grant him even one wish.

Gaara thought not for the first time about his regret that he couldn't be present in the flesh with her this evening. In this clone body, he found himself thinking that his breath should catch in his throat right now. His pulse should race as she walked towards him. But as always when his imprint was stamped on the sand, his emotions were fictions, intellectual facsimiles of real visceral response.

On the one hand he knew factually that he'd been cheated of something, not seeing her in the flesh - but, at the same time he knew logically that he was able to present her with the collected persona he liked to project to the world, as well as the illusion that he was still whole, at least one last time.

"Osashiburi, Gaara-sama," she said to him, her dark hair stirring as if animated with its own life.

His clone bowed to her deeply before standing. His half-man - no, she thought, merely a quarter-man tonight by the feel of it - didn't have the sort of vitality she had felt before in his clones, and yet it still appeared to her in a pressed black jacket and pants, the stiff mock turtle neck at his collar bending naturally as he tucked his head and leaned forward. The wind even played through his hair. How remarkable his control was, she marvelled, how skilled a sculptor he must be, to make so perfect a copy for her. To make one that appeared so real. The feeling that he was not truly there twisted in her as she wondered ruefully if he ever cheated, and made himself even just a little bit taller.

"Good evening, Aiynuur-san," the clone said, quietly, evenly, perfectly.

No, this was not the man on the microphone only a few minutes before. Gaara, where are you? Aiynuur wondered, sadness constricting her chest as she closed the distance between them. Feeling wooden, she bowed in turn to him, and watched as he gestured to a large velvet carpet that had been laid out on the sand. She sat on one of the tufted pillows he had set there and watched as he sat down a short distance from her.

"It's good to see you," he said. "I'm sorry for the last few weeks. You must have felt like you'd been forgotten. For what it's worth there were three people checking in on you remotely, although I'm guessing that probably doesn't feel terribly comforting all the same."

She sat there in silence, her tongue a cold stone. If the real man were in front her she would have stayed silent to make him sweat. Or at least in the hopes that she could, just a little. Choosing to ignore her silence, or perhaps not even registering it, his clone reached over to the side and grabbed a large covered silver serving tray with both hands. He picked it up and placed it in front of her.

"I have one other gift for you," he said. "I hope you enjoyed the others, but this I think you'll like this best. Please, open it," he instructed.

Aiynuur nodded and knelt forward, grabbing the knob of the heavy plated metal lid, lifting it ponderously and setting it aside. She couldn't help the gasp that escaped her as she saw what was inside. There, laying on a bed of leaves like uncut jewels were dozens of fruit. She realized with delight that she did not recognize any of them.

"All your sins are forgiven," Aiynuur said in an awed whisper, eyes wide.

Hearing that, he knew that Gaara would have probably chuckled, and so he offered her a smile. But she was too focused on his gift to see it anyway.

"What's this one?" she asked. "Oh, it's fuzzy!" she laughed, picking up a small brown fruit from the plate.

"They call it a gooseberry," the clone said.

"Wow! Do you peel it?"

"Yes, you can," he explained, as he watched her face he realized curiously that she seemed to be speaking, but he couldn't hear her.

"Sorry, what was that?" he asked as the sound of the fire and the night came back to him. Something must be happening with his body he mused in a detached way. Emotionless as it was, the clone observed this fact but was able to stay distant from it.

"Let's eat together," Aiynuur said. "Let's share this." Picking up a silver knife from the tray and gently trying to peel the outside off of the fruit. He had anticipated this would happen, that she would want him to eat, too, but he had never quite decided in the flesh what he would do about it.

She had peeled the fuzzy skin somewhat clumsily off of the small fruit, revealing the delicate green flesh inside. She did her best to cut the slippery fruit evenly in half.

He offered her another smile shape as she made to hand him half of the fruit. "You first," he said.

Aiynuur frowned, but said nothing, bringing the fruit up to her mouth and taking a bite.

"Is it good?" he asked. "Do you like it?"

Aiynuur was still frowning, but she nodded at him in response.

"It so sweet...I've never had anything like it," she paused for a moment, looking down. "So you can't even eat with me then?" she asked - finally acknowledging his artificial presence.

"No, I'm sorry," the clone said. "I cannot. I'm afraid there are...circumstances that kept me away tonight. It seemed unfair not to meet with you though. You've waited so long. But, anything you say or do with me, I will know later. That is still true," he said.

"You can't eat and you can't smell then..." Aiynuur reflected aloud. "Tell me, have you ever...seen the flower that made this fruit?" she asked.

"No," he responded. "I'm afraid I haven't."

"Then...would you like to?" Aiynuur asked.

"Yes," the clone said. "Yes, I would - very much," he said, curious to see another demonstration of her strange power.

"Alright then," she said, smiling again. The clone watched her as she picked up one of orange oblong fruit from the tray. This time Gaara's clone did not notice when the world went silent for him once again, his attention was fixed so firmly on the little sphere she held in her hands.

Aiynuur tucked the fruit in her hands covering it completely. She concentrated, feeling the small plant's nascent life force shivering in her hands. She felt the connection points, prickling at her palm, and she removed the barrier that separated her life force from its, feeling the acceleration as it crumbled and reshaped in her hand.

"Now let's see what we have," Aiynuur said, sweat tingling at her brow, her excitement growing as felt the strangeness of the fruit's bloom already in her hand.

She uncoupled her hands revealing what was surely the strangest bloom she'd ever seen. It took her breath away. Lying in her outstretched hand was a pure white blossom at the base of it. Above it a crown of purple needle-like petals was pierced at their center by what looked like a green shoot with vivid maroon antennae at the top.

"Oh my god," Aiynuur laughed. "I never could have imagined! Gaara, have you ever seen anything so..."

Her tongue stumbled. He was so still. He was so still, as she looked at him, his gaze locked on where her hand had been just a moment before. Gaara's form was frozen. Lifting her free hand, Aiynuur stepped forward to cup the cheek of his unmoving face. Though she touched it gently it lost its colour and crumbled beneath her fingers. She sank heavily to her knees as the she watched the evening wind begin to steal his image away.

"You stupid man," was all she could say as the wetness sprang to her eyes. Aiynuur leaned forward and put the white flower on what had been his knee. She let herself stay there, feeling that bereavement, feeling foolish that she had resented the clone only to miss it savagely as soon as it was gone. She let herself have that sadness, but only for a moment. Something was wrong. Something was obviously very wrong. She needed to figure it out. She would figure it out.

Standing, she brushed the sand from her hands and dress. Aiynuur turned, seeing the bowl of fruit laying on the carpet, now gathering his sand as the clone unravelled. If he couldn't come to her, then she would find him. She would find him and maybe she would be able to help.

Taking up the uppermost gossamer layer of her dress, she tore a strip from it and began collecting some of the fruit from the tray. That was when she felt again the other man - the one she had thought of as the chaperon, approach from about 100 meters away. She already knew what he was up to. This man must be the back up plan. He was going to try to put her away.

Aiynuur had collected about six of the different fruits in the strip from her dress. She wrapped the uneven gossamer fabric around her lumpy cargo. Her package created, she chose to ignore the approaching man completely. Instead Aiynuur closed her eyes and felt the heat of the energy of the city. It was close, perhaps a mile away - to the west. She opened her eyes and began to walk in that direction. He would be there. She couldn't feel him yet, but she would - if he wasn't too weak. She hoped fiercely that he wasn't too weak.

"Hey," the other man's voice said behind her.

"Hey, yourself," Aiynuur said petulantly as she walked on, not stopping.

Kankuro was within twenty feet of her. He stopped, weighing what to do next and how to process what he had just seen.

"You've got to understand that I can't let you leave," Kankuro said.

With that the woman stopped and looked over her shoulder at him, he could see the sadness in her eyes even there in the firelight.

"Why would I walk towards your city if I wanted to escape?" she asked.

"Okay...then what are you doing?" Kankuro asked.

She sighed and turned fully towards him, clutching her makeshift package to her chest.

"I know a last supper when I see one," Aiynuur said almost to herself, and then to him she said, "He's hurt isn't he?"

Kankuro didn't respond to her, surprised that she had intuited this much.

"He is then...your silence says he is." The woman said, looking into his eyes. Kankuro looked away.

"I want to see his face, his real face," she said. "And I want to bring him these," Aiynuur said, gesturing to the package she held. "And then I want to slap him in that smart face for doing something so...exhausting. If he truly is hurt, he shouldn't have expend so much energy playing at a damn picnic."

"Heh," Kankuro laughed. If only the woman knew the task of knocking sense into Gaara for overdoing it was already readily fulfilled by their older sister. Well, figuratively at least.

"Please?" Aiynuur asked, more moisture gathering at her eyes. "Please, can I do this?" she asked, her eyes pleading.

A silent moment passed as Kankuro considered the consequences, but the truth was, he was concerned too. It was not like Gaara to let one of his clones dissipate like that.

"Let's go," Kankuro said, walking forward.

"Thank you," she said quietly as she fell in stride next to him.

"You wouldn't have gotten far without me," Kankuro explained.

"Yes, maybe," Aiynuur laughed. "A strange woman in a ripped dress carrying around a bunch of fruit and saying she'd like to see the Kazekage now please probably wouldn't have gotten a free pass, I guess..."

There was a knock at the door.

Sari and Temari both stood at once but it was Temari who reached the door first. She opened the it to reveal the face of her errant middle brother and she launched immediately into admonishment.

"Kankuro where were you? I was just trying to..." Temari's words stopped dead as Kankuro shifted slightly aside to reveal - a short dark haired woman she didn't recognize wearing a dress that she very much did recognize. It was one of the three Temari had picked out, after all - for who she thought was surely Matsuri-san. Perhaps it was her own sense of shock, seeing that dress on an alien body, or perhaps it was the feeling of the woman's atmosphere, but Temari felt herself swept back as she stepped forward and into the room - the woman's direction and intention were palpable.

The strange woman quickly fixated on the one door that led to Gaara's bed chamber beyond.

"There," the woman said, as if to herself. A long sigh escaped her small frame as if she had been holding it.

"What..." Temari began, regaining her composure. Sari had drawn up next to her, ready to ward off this new intruder.

"You're his sister. It's nice to meet you," the woman said. Temari looked at the woman's striking eyes - in the dim light of the room their brown seemed almost a dark red.

"Sorry, who the hell are you?" Temari asked, and then to Kankuro. "Why have you brought someone here right now, Kankuro? You weren't there when I tried to reach you - I was reading Gaara a report when he passed out. He's developed a fever. He's still out of it right now. Uta-sensei is checking him out as we speak."

"Arrhythmia..." Aiynuur said, but no one in the room seemed to notice. She began to walk towards the door to his bedroom.

"Aiynuur-san, wait," Kankuro said, grabbing her arm to stop her.

"The Kazekage is asleep, and very much not seeing anyone right now," Sari said, inserting herself before the woman and the door. She paused for a moment, finally recognizing who was standing in front of her.

"It's you!" Sari said, accusingly.

Kankuro pulled Aiynuur back from Gaara's assistant, realizing that Sari had been there at the office incident almost two months ago and was totally unaware that the woman who perpetrated that mayhem had not actually been dispatched after her so-called attack on the Kage's tower.

"Sari-san," Kankuro said. "It's not what you think..."

"Not what I think?" Sari said, her volume rising. "I was there. This woman tried to kill..."

"Excuse me. EXCUSE ME." Uta-sensei's voice rang out, loud enough to interrupt what was likely about to be a brawl in the Kazekage's living room.

Everyone turned to the stocky gray-haired woman standing at the door.

"Is...the woman called Aiynuur-san here?" Uta asked, as if she didn't quite believe that the answer could be yes.

Aiynuur brushed aside Kankuro's hold on her arm and stepped forward.

"Yes, I'm here," Aiynuur said, feeling uncomfortable knowing all eyes were on her now that she was no longer trying to hone in on his energy.

Uta looked her over once and said, "Well, you're looking a lot better, Aiynuur-san. The Kazekage would like to see you now."

Aiynuur exhaled and nodded, normally she would have fixated on the fact that this woman seemed to know her, but she was too busy thinking now of Gaara and her nerves. Was she being disruptive coming here to see him? Sure she could likely help, but would he let her? Would they let her? Wasn't this invasive? Would she be turned away? But, then again, he had sensed that she was there. He had been well enough to do that, and he had asked for her. She stepped forward hugging her home made package close to her as she walked towards where Uta-sensei stood next to the door.

Aiynuur took a deep breath - seeing him injured would be difficult. Seeing him injured might bring back memories that were hard for her to deal with. But, all of that could not be helped, at least if she wanted to help him. She had to take the risk. She had to step forward knowing how this could hurt her. Uta stepped aside to let the woman pass, but stayed in the open door way, leaning against the side. Perhaps the Kazekage trusted her, but Uta, even more than Sari, was aware of the things that this woman could do.

His room was full of books and plants. Of course it would be, she thought. A telescope stood next to a large window, bathed in moonlight. Aiynuur stepped forward, her feet charting a path that felt too long to where he lay on a narrow bed on the far side of the room. His bed was set in a windowless nook atop a wooden platform. Next to the nook was a writing desk with a microphone and a lamp on it, and the desk's companion chair, which had been set next to the bed as if someone had recently been sitting there with him.

Aiynuur finally let her eyes stray to him. Gaara was lying down, his eyes shut, the mask of a ventilating machine attached to his face. His chest rose and fell with an unnatural sort of labour. Even from a few feet away she could hear the phlegmatic sound of a pair of damaged lungs. Down the his left side, the side the faced the wall, starting at the base of his neck and disappearing below a thin sheet that covered him were bandages that concealed what Aiynuur guessed were likely terrible burns. He had been in a fire - or perhaps some kind of explosion. How was that possible? His gifts made him seem so untouchable.

As his eyes were closed she thought it polite to pause a few feet away from the bed where he lay. She sighed and released the tight guard she'd been holding on her energy, as her energy dropped out and expanded she could feel his more fully - it felt sluggish, as if it were in a torpor from utter exhaustion. She would have been angry again at him for spending it if she weren't so shaken. So this was why a week and become a month.

Finally, he opened his eyes and turned to her, sitting up with a sort of glacial effort. Aiynuur wanted to assist him but knew he would likely find such a gesture offensive and so she stood mutely. He leaned up against the wall of the nook, his chest heaving again from the effort and he began to fumble with his ventilator mask, as if to remove it.

"Don't..." Aiynuur said forcefully, alarmed. He didn't have the energy or the lung power to speak with her right now, and she would be damned if she let him try out of simple pride. She set her package of fruit down on top of some papers on his desk, and set the chair next to the bed. She sat and then looked up at him shyly.

"Can you believe I thought it would be much worse?" Aiynuur asked.

Gaara chuckled behind his mask, but his breath caught in his chest, and quickly transforming into a spasmodic cough. Aiynuur hissed in fear and without thinking she leaned forward and set her naked palm on his chest. Gaara felt her energy like a surge of heat flowing into him, easing the spasm in his lungs almost immediately.

Surprised by the sudden gesture and its soothing effect, he looked at Aiynuur, whose eyes were shut tightly in concentration, and then noticed over her shoulder that Uta and Temari had entered the room through the still open door, as if to remove her from him. He shook his head. Breathing calmly now he reached up and touched Aiynuur's hand on his chest. She opened her eyes, recovering her hand quickly, as if she'd done something wrong.

"I'm sorry," she said, nervously gathering up her black hair and putting over one shoulder, as he had seen her do in person during their first interview in the desert.

"Aiynuur..." he began to whisper, muffled by the plastic mask and fettered by his aching throat and chest.

"No, please," she said, smiling at him. "Please, let's...play a game...a game where neither of us can speak or even make a sound. The first one to say something loses, okay?" Aiynuur asked, her eyes shining with fresh mischief. Gaara smiled beneath his mask and nodded, leaning back against the wall, tired but curious to see what this unpredictable woman would do next.

His last memory of her with the clone had been muddled - something about her being upset that he was not there in person, that he could not eat with her. Truthfully in his current condition he would have found it hard, painful even to try but he had a feeling that she realized that, and had come up with some new tactic to engage him. Gaara watched as she stood gracefully and stepped over to his desk where she had left something.

Gaara allowed himself to admire her as he watched her unravel what looked like a strip torn from the gossamer cloth of the dress that Temari had picked out. He was prepared to admit that she looked more lovely in it in the flesh than she had even in his mind's eye - the memories that the clone had released to him.

But here in his room - she no longer looked ethereal, but all too real. Her reality - the look and touch of her which he found he cherished, made it all the harder to know that he sat before her, his body broken up, feeling like a shard of who he was. Gaara was not prepared to think on what she must think of him right now, but he supposed it must be pity. She hid it well, he thought, as he watched her retrieve a small orange fruit and sat back down next to the bed upon the chair.

She scooted her chair even closer to where he was so that they could both peer into her cupped hands at the smallish fruit. Deja vu niggled at him - he remembered her words strained through the perceptions of the clone. "Have you ever seen the flower that made this fruit? Would you like to?" she had asked him. He could not remember what had happened next - but he felt the goose flesh begin to rise on his un-bandaged skin as he felt her start to shape her energy right in front of him. He watched as she breathed deeply over the fruit. She then covered it with her hands and closed her eyes.

Aiynuur felt the prickle of the small fruit's life even more powerfully than before. She wasn't sure if it was her familiarity with its form now, or the fact that she was, well, showing off for him, but her own chakra felt bright and eager to play. She thought of the little game that she had devised, and what would truly dazzle him. This time, in the flesh, she would show him unvarnished and openly a part of what she could do. She hoped it wouldn't frighten or disturb him.

He watched as she opened her hands again, still cupping the fruit and locking eyes with him, a smirk played over her face. Gaara felt the charge in the air around him and thought he saw her wink quickly before turning her attention back to the oblong shape in her hand.

Incredibly, the fruit began to wither in her hands - its skin becoming mottled and brown, then slack with decay before collapsing into a sort of sludge and then finally earth into her hand. Alarmed, he looked back at her face, still she smiled calmly, contemplating the earth now that she held.

A green shoot snaked its way out of the dirt. It spun up as he watched, awed, as a bud grew out of that slender tendril, swelling in size until it broke open in her hand - erupting into a bloom that was a riot of white, purple, green and maroon. Compelled, he found the word drawn from him automatically by the sight of it.

"Subarashii..." Gaara whispered, unthinking of her challenge or his condition. As if to punish him for his emotion his chest threatened to seize up again, but her hand was back upon him, arresting the spasm even as it began. She grinned at him, triumphant, holding that beautiful, alien white bloom in her left hand, her right hand still on his chest over his heart.

"I win," Aiynuur said.

Gaara smiled beneath his mask, breathing more deeply underneath her hand than he had in weeks. They stayed like that for a long moment. He realized suddenly that his injured left hand was resting atop hers on his chest. That energy had taken the edge from his pain.

Was this a part of her gift too? He felt his heart pounding beneath her hand, and knew that she could feel it. He locked eyes with her and saw her looking back at him, her eyes lidded, her lips parted. Aiynuur gave him a shy smile before gently removing her hand from his chest. She cupped the flower with both hands and got up and sat next to him on the very edge of his bed, offering him a closer look. He looked down at what Gaara knew now to be the flower of what the waterland people called the passion fruit. With the fingers of his uninjured hand, he traced the petals of the flower she held.

"The needle-like little purple petals, I've never seen anything like them," she said. "Shall we find out what these other ones look like?" she asked, conspiratorially.

He nodded.

The last efflorescence that she shared with him was just as incredible as the first. Its petals, white underneath, were laced with deep pink veins on the top. The anther of the flower were like the blast of a firework, crowned with yellow filaments, like tracers of red fire following yellow incendiaries through the night's sky. It had been the flower of the guava fruit. He would have to write them all down for her, so she would know their names as he did. Gaara felt that twinge of loss knowing that he was utterly exhausted, and that she understood that, and that their short audience would be ending now.

Before she left the room, Aiynuur took the large bowl and pitcher that had been set by the bed for him to bathe with. She set the basin atop his desk chair and poured the water from the jug into it. Then she took the exotic flowers, six in number, and placed them each gently on the top of the water so that they would float there, where he could enjoy them. She stood and her eyes strayed to his desk, where she saw something there. Aiynuur picked up a book that Gaara had left face down, still open to the last page he had read - the same book of Rumi's poems he'd read from to her.

"May I borrow this for a short while?" she asked.

Gaara nodded, pleased that she would ask, perhaps a little nervous of what she would find there.

"Thank you," Aiynuur said. "For letting me see you. If I can visit again, I would like that. As you know, I'm pretty easy to find. Please take care of yourself. Don't tire yourself out with any more those stupid clones, okay?"

Not waiting for him to respond, she reached down and held his hand briefly. Gaara felt one last languid wave of her energy wash down his arm and sweep over him, suffusing him with a heat so inviting that his eyes shut almost immediately. Instead of accepting her invitation to sleep he held on to her yet for a brief moment, squeezing her hand once before finally letting her go.

"Who the hell is she?" Temari asked Kankuro in a whisper after Aiynuur had entered Gaara's room.

"Well," Kankuro hesitated. Starting with Sari's frame of reference - the woman who supposedly had bombed Gaara's office and then attempted a dramatic escape - was likely not the right place to start. "You could say she's a sort of friend...or a hobby of Gaara's."

"Hobby?" Temari asked, frustrated with Kankuro's obtuse answer. "You're stonewalling me. You're both stonewalling me and I will get to the bottom of this." At the moment she was more concerned with keeping a protective eye on Gaara and the woman's interaction, ready to intervene on this unknown quantity as needed.

Temari was...surprised to see so plainly a sort of tenderness between them, after Gaara sent her and Uta back with a glance the first time Aiynuur laid her hand on his chest to apparently sooth him. Who the hell is this woman and where did she come from? Temari thought again.

Had she been so wrapped up in her own impending wedding with Shikamaru that she had failed to notice this new change in her brother's life? Somehow she had. But if it escaped her, it had escaped the whole town. Gaara's celibacy had been the source of both speculation and frustration for many years among the village. The popularity of the topic made the woman's anonymity all the more mysterious.

The three of them - Uta, Temari, and Kankuro then watched as the woman created that first, perfect white flower for him. Perhaps it was her bone weariness, or the stress of her brother's illness, maybe it was just the simple wonder of it, but - she felt a great emotion as as she watched someone create and then offer to her brother that small perfect thing.

Suddenly the question was no longer just who she was but also what she was. What kind of nindo was this? It didn't seem to be Genjutsu - if it were an illusion it was one so subtle that none of them could shake it. If it were not an illusion - then what was this woman shaping? Not only her power, but the life of that plant itself. There were the healing arts of course, which involved using your own chakra to manipulate another's form, but not their energy.

In Konoha Temari knew thanks to Nara that there were high level techniques that people like past Kages had used to shape the life force entire forests to use them in battle - similar to summoning magic. Was that this magic? Was this woman from Konoha then?

Finally, her audience over, the woman stood, and began walking towards them. She held a book that Temari couldn't recognize against her chest. Kankuro moved out of the doorway to let the woman pass between them as Uta-sensei and Temari hung back to check that Gaara was okay. Temari stepped into the room, confirming the motion of even breath in his body, before turning the light off on Gaara's desk. She exited and slid the pocket door shut behind her.

The woman walked up to one of the two large windows in the room as if to gaze casually at the night scene there. Her gaze was not restful though. Silent tears fell from her eyes. From where she sat on the couch Sari stood to confront the alien.

"Who are you to cry?" Sari asked Aiynuur, bitterly. "How can you dare to cry like you know him?"

"I am no one," was Aiynuur's hollow reply.

"May I see that book you're holding, Aiynuur-san?" Uta-sensei asked calmly.

Temari was relieved that one of them seemed to be thinking like a Shinobi. If the woman walked out with a state secret from Gaara's desk right under their noses the lapse would have been inexcusable. Aiynuur nodded with a sad, distant expression and handed the book to the doctor. As she did the gray-haired woman touched Aiynuur's forehead with her hand. Uta felt the fever there.

"You told him not to over do it," Uta-sensei said as she flipped through the pages of what proved to be merely a book of old poetry. She handed it back to the young woman. "You should follow your own advice."

Aiynuur shrugged and gave the woman a weak smile. "I have a feeling you know that I heal quickly," she remarked ruefully.

"So, let me see," Aiynuur said, sighing, turning more fully towards Uta-sensei and the rest of them in the room. "From what I saw, and felt - I would say primary blast injuries, caused by an explosive at close range. Injuries include third and second degree burns primarily on the left side of his body. Traumatic amputation of his left foot below the ankle, but most concerning - pulmonary contusions to the lungs, caused by the wave of over-pressurization that struck him just after the blast. Is that about right?" Aiynuur asked the doctor.

Dumbfound for a moment, Uta quickly regained her composure and nodded, stiffly. Uncomfortable by the words "what I felt", and the sudden revelation of the woman's medical knowledge. How dangerous was this woman? They had let her get so close to the Kazekage, to touch him, and that was enough for her to know all this?

"I would like to see his chart," Aiynuur said.

"No," was Uta's blunt response.

"I would understand it, of course," Aiynuur explained.

"That's not what I'm concerned about," Uta replied. "My concern is why - why would you like to see it?"

Aiynuur sighed. "Because he read to me...Because I want my freedom back," she said. "But most importantly because I think I can help. I know I can help, if you let me."

With that Aiynuur stepped forward to the low glossy lacquer table set before the seating area in the living room. Gaara was always collecting odd things that caught his eye from his walks in nature. On it currently were a number of quartz crystals, and weathered saguaro roots. The smallest among his strange treasures was the shiny black shell of an insect's pupa. She picked it up and held it in her hand - there was still some life there, she could feel it.

"What do you want with that old thing?" Sari asked with disgust.

"A demonstration," Aiynuur said.

They watched as the woman held out her left hand with the pupa in her palm. Sari moaned as blood seeped from the woman's palm from no apparent wound and spread across it. Then a layer of skin grew over the pupa. Below the freshly formed skin the the pupa seemed to shudder and struggle. They all watched in mute shock as the skin of her palm tore open again and the wet body of a small moth, dark with blood crawled out from beneath the pale membrane of her skin. Sari's sudden retching was the only sound that broke the silence in the room.

The woman brought her palms to her lips and blew on the newly born insect. As they watched its wings dried and unfurled, shaking the dust of her blood from its wings. Temari suddenly recognized it as the desert marigold moth. The tiny moth's blush and roan coloured wings began to flap and it took flight, heading upwards towards the nearest source of light.

"It thinks that electric bulb is the moon, poor thing," Aiynuur said.

"Monster," it was Sari that broke the awful silence. "You're a monster," she spat, taking another step towards the woman.

"Yes!" Aiynuur said passionately, sadly. "Yes, I am a monster - you're right. That's what they made me to be. But it's not what you are. It's who you are. I believe that. I have to believe that," she said.

"And just who are you then, anyway?" Temari asked.

Aiynuur looked up, meeting the woman's sea-dark eyes.

"Someone who can help," Aiynuur said, more calmly now. "I can make more than flowers grow. I can do more than stupid parlour tricks. I can heal people, I can heal myself, just ask the Doctor here. I may be able to heal him, if you'll let me."

"If we let you? Shouldn't you be asking Gaara that?" Temari asked.

"He was too tired tonight to ask," Aiynuur replied. "And the truth is, I didn't want to...couldn't really bare to hear him say no. It's true I don't know this man," she said, glancing at Sari. "But it seems to me," she continued, "...like he would be just stubborn enough to let himself die, as if it were...the easy option for everyone. But I think, I think he might listen to you - all of you. If you talk to him together. You will need more demonstration to trust me, I understand that. As it happens I would want more practice, and those two needs align."

"Please," Aiynuur said, sweeping the room to look at all of them. "Please, think about it - if his health is as poor as it seems to be, please give me just one chance."

"Why?" It was Kankuro asked this time. "Why would you do this for him?"

"Because, he read to me," Aiynuur responded again, as if that explained everything. "I should go - he's still awake. He won't go to sleep until I go - I think, my presence is too disturbing. Will you help me find the way back?"

Kankuro nodded, relieved that it sounded as if he would not have to convince her - verbally or otherwise - to return to the place where they held her.

"Thank you."

And with that the woman retrieved her book and left, Kankuro leading the way.

Temari let out her breath and sat - trying to process all that she had just seen and heard. Could this woman really do all that? She wondered. Her original questions about the woman's identity and her origin remained unanswered. Kankuro would get an earful as soon as he returned. Could she dare to hope that this woman could help Gaara? Help them?

Meanwhile Sari had found a broom from the cupboard and was trying to swat at the marigold moth that was buzzing around the light fixture.

"Stop," Uta-sensei said, grabbing the broom from the young woman's hand. "Let it be."


	10. Chapter 10

"What we have is an opportunity," Uta said confidently to Temari.

Uta sat on the edge of her seat while Kankuro sprawled next to her on the couch in the private reception area of the Kazekage's newly remade office. Temari had ostensibly stepped in to take on just a bit of Gaara's work while he was in recovery. No one yet understood how much of it she was truly doing. It was just two days after the night that Aiynuur had made her visit.

The suite of office rooms in the Tower had been fixed and redecorated in a simple, natural style that was much more in Gaara's taste than the ostentatious decoration that he had inherited from their father and grandfather. He would've been...he will be pleased with it. Temari corrected herself, when he returns.

Currently Uta and Kankuro were petitioning Temari to help sway Gaara to accept the foreigner Aiynuur's offer to heal him. Kankuro seemed to be sold hook line and sinker on the whole idea - having somehow developed a sense of trust for the woman while "plant sitting" as he referred to it for Gaara when Gaara had left on his disastrous trip to the Hidden Village of Mist. Of the three of the sand siblings though, Kankuro was the most free with his emotions, and the most likely to gamble.

Uta was taking a different tact, and one that appealed more intuitively to Temari's conservative nature.

"This may not, in fact, result in us allowing her to attempt to heal the Kazekage-sama's injuries," Uta explained. "Aiynuur-san's ability to help him or not will be determined by the process. But, it is, at least, a chance to understand more fully the potential this woman has - both to heal, which we can then learn from and adapt for our own needs, as well as her potential attacks. I do not believe we've seen the extent of her power yet. I would rest more easily, as I'm sure you would, knowing better what we've got sleeping beneath the desert," Uta said portentously.

Temari nodded and took another sip of her tea. Kankuro had been right to enlist Uta to persuade her. As one of their best and brightest medical minds, she was ideally suited to turn any knowledge gleaned from the woman to the Village's advantage. And, fortunately, by an accident of fate - she was already at the heart of the situation. They need not pull anyone else into the inner ring to investigate the alien woman further, or to understand the extent of the Kazekage's injuries beyond the handful of medical personnel currently sustaining him.

That being said, the knowledge that Temari gained about Aiynuur's identity since their meeting two days ago had made her only less inclined to trust her, magic show or no. A mystery woman discovered in the desert who may or may not be from the Grass. A woman who her own brother named because she had no name of her own. A woman who had caused the destruction of Gaara's office in what both Gaara and Kankuro claimed was an escape attempt - but could well still have been a ham fisted attempt on his life. And yet, then again, the idea of her being an assassin didn't make sense, did it?

If this woman wanted to assassinate their brother - surely she would have attempted to do so two days ago, when he was at his weakest. Or sometime before then - Gaara had met her at least once by himself to learn more about her. No, if there were any criminal angle, it would be one of influence.

This woman had a hold on their brother already. After watching their exchange over the flowers, that was clear. Healing him would only strengthen that bond. If it were successful, the Kazekage could be wrapped firmly around the finger of someone who could be one of the most powerful sleeper agents they had ever seen.

And yet - that thought left an unpleasant taste in her mouth. Because that line of thinking was drawn from the same poisonous well that the Village counsel of elders drew on to revile her own engagement to a man from Konoha. Disorientation was easy in this strange new age that Uzumaki Naruto had created. For the older generation perhaps most of all, but also for theirs - the ones that stood half in the light. Did the shadows of the past always have to stain their view? She thought of Shikamaru, and their broken...no, delayed engagement.

What would Gaara do, if this had been her? Her little brother, the unexpected idealist. He had been the first to congratulate her on their engagement. Knowing that Temari felt pinned between her love for Shikamaru, and the pointless xenophobia of the Village elite, Gaara had told her immediately that he would support her in this union - and that he would even advocate for the birthright of any of her children to be considered prospects for the position of Kazekage.

Temari had refused his offer to honour their birthright, not wanting to damage him politically, but still. Her little brother, the idealist. The one who the whole world had wronged. Maybe, for once, the world would give him something back. Maybe all she needed to do was to get out of the way.

"Well, what do you think, nee-chan?" Kankuro asked. "Uta-sensei will conduct her exercises with her, and I will be present to reign the situation in, if it gets of hand."

"Nee-chan?" Temari couldn't let the childish way he had appealed to her pass without some comment. "Yes," she said finally. "I will speak to Gaara tonight. Give that woman what she needs, within reason, but report everything to me."

"I will accept Aiynuur-san's help, but only on one condition," Gaara wrote, sitting upright again in the alcove in his room that held his narrow monastic bed.

"And what's that?" Temari asked, her conservative nature not allowing her to agree haphazardly to anything, even this, without understanding his terms fully first.

"You will get married - you and Shikamaru. Already you've delayed too long," read Gaara's request.

"But...with your condition I don't think that..." Temari began. Gaara lifted a hand to halt her words.

"In my condition?" Gaara wrote. "If we must maintain the fiction of my health yet, could there be anything more suspicious than delay? The elites know - they must know, about your intended date. Delaying any further would indicate weakness, and we still have not selected an heir yet. Although my ability to conduct some business in clone form has delayed their inevitable assessment that I am - damaged. The fact that your marriage has not occurred is most damning of all."

"But what about her?" Temari asked, referring to the woman, Aiynuur. "Do you have faith in her?"

Gaara paused before writing. Temari watched the motes of dust swirled in the 10 am sunlight that pooled on the blanket that concealed his scarred legs.

"Can I have faith in starlight?" Gaara wrote. "Can I have faith in the night wind? If it is in her to save me, then I believe she will do it. She is as much a mystery to me as she is to you, still."

That admission was hardly comforting to Temari, knowing she was putting her brother's life in the woman's hands. If only Chiyo-baasama were still alive. Unfortunately Gaara's condition had not stabilized, it was getting worse. Had they not felt the need to maintain the fiction of his health perhaps it would be different. They could call on other resources, from Konoha perhaps.

As it was, Uta-sensei, a single nurse, and one of their clan, the Kage's clan chakra healer Fumiko worked together to maintain Gaara's health. Despite Fumiko's hard work, the pulmonary contusions that Uta-sensei diagnosed that Gaara had suffered as a result of the blast had developed into a case of pneumonia. Pneumonia - it was a thing sick children and frail old men developed. But her brother had it now.

Her brother's lungs were filling up with liquid, the by-product of his body's process of fighting off a resistant infection. The irony that the action of his body's salvation was engineering his death was not lost on her. Nor was this knowledge. Her little brother was drowning, slowly. Each day it got a little worse. Her little brother was drowning in the desert - and she could not fish him out, she could not take the pressure from his lungs that made his days short and weary, and that made each breath a tired gasp.

Next week. It would have to be next week, she decided as soon as Gaara had made his determination. It was just enough time to for Shikamaru and his family to arrive. It was just enough time, she hoped, for Aiynuur-san to practice and assemble what she needed. One or two days after the ceremony, depending on how Aiynuur-san and Uta-sensei were feeling and thinking about it, they would try.

Gaara was right - further delay of her nuptials would be suspicious. On the one hand she did not want to delay her marriage any further than they already had. On the other hand her darker thoughts reminded her that she did not want her anniversary to be forever followed by the commemoration of her brother's death, if it should come to that. She could not think of it. She would not think of it. If he died then the woman Aiynuur would have to follow her brother to hell, whether to face justice or to bring him back. It was as simple as that.

"He what?" Aiynuur shouted, pounding her fist on the metal lab table. Shocked at her emotional display, Uta watched her dumbfounded for a moment. In the past few days of their collaboration she'd never seen the woman so upset.

"Pneumonia. Pneumocystis pneumonia. That's what he's developed," Uta repeated.

"But that usually only happens in cases where someone is immune suppressed, " Aiynuur said, disbelieving. In a moment her expression changed from bewilderment and anger, to resolve. The woman tightened the lace on her gi and began to walk quickly out of the room where they had just conducted their latest three-legged transmutational experiment.

It had been a success, a miraculous success again. That was two today. Uta had put their latest now four-legged patient back into its cage before finally presenting to Aiynuur the information that she had asked for 6 days ago, Gaara's full medical chart and an update on how he was doing currently.

"Did you miss the myocardial contusion as well?" Aiynuur asked derisively as she stomped out of the room. Kankuro was swept up in the momentum of the two women's wake as Uta pursued the irate Aiynuur out of the underground lab room.

"No, of course not!" Uta-sensei hissed in self-defence as she walked quickly to keep up with the other woman's stride, clutching the medical chart to her side. They both watched as Aiynuur rubbed her forehead, as if she had a headache. Truthfully she always had a headache when she was in the human buzz of the City.

"Aiynuur...sensei," Uta said, finally using the honorific that she felt proper for the woman, although years her junior. "Let's talk about this further back in the room," Uta urged. The disused corridor of the lab facility was empty, but the threat of someone coming by and overhearing something about the real state of the Kazekage was ever-present. Temari and Shikamaru's wedding ceremony was to be held tomorrow, but any news that the Kage was not as well as reported would be damaging.

Tomorrow, or the day after Uta-sensei would determine whether to conduct the healing. Aiynuur did not know at this moment that Uta would be making the ultimate call about whether or not they would proceed. Even as Uta's estimation of the woman's skills rose, so too did her sense that she could not have refused Aiynuur at this point, even if she tried. The young woman's determination had a sort of gravity - a force all its own.

So far Uta had felt cautiously ambitious about Aiynuur's prospects. Even more so today, as Aiynuur had finally begun to practice what she referred to as transmutational healing. Kankuro still didn't know what that meant, having been asked to stay outside while they conducted their trials. But he did know he'd spent several days with the strange assignment to try to catch old sick stray dogs, and feral three legged cats from the city's burgeoning street animal population. The dogs had come willingly for the price of a good meal, the cats of Suna were wiry and wily - they had not been an easy task, he had the scratches to prove it, much to his annoyance.

Uta and Kankuro watched Aiynuur look up as if sensing something. She promptly strode to the nearest door - an emergency exit. This particular facility was used for some of Suna's most top secret R&D. That meant that the emergency exits, although there, were designed to be one-way, and difficult to exit, unless you had the proper key code - which every real employee had. Typing in the correct key code would allow for access to the release handle for the door otherwise kept under glass. Not using the proper key code would cause an alarm to go off. Aiynuur either didn't suspect this, or didn't care.

"Now wait a min..." Uta-sensei couldn't even get the words out of her mouth before she watched Aiynuur punch through the glass cover. Immediately a klaxon began to wail as Aiynuur clutched at the release handle for the door and gasped in pain as she pulled it down.

Stunned, Kankuro and Uta followed her up the stairs and unto the street as the klaxon continued to blare. Fortunately they had been the first to exit and so no one had spotted yet who had thrown the alarm. There would be questions later, and likely security video that would need to be corrupted by their friends at the Lookout.

"Shit," Kankuro said as he scanned the street for witnesses. Aiynuur paused again for a moment, as if aligning herself with something - and then began to march straight in the direction of Gaara's apartment.

"Aiynuur-san!" Kankuro yelled. The woman kept walking down the alley she'd immediately gravitated to which, as the Crow flew - well, the bird flew, would lead you directly to where his younger brother convalesced.

"Stop! That way's a dead end, idiot," Kankuro yelled.

"Idiot? How dare you keep this information from me!" Aiynuur shouted hotly.

Uta and Kankuro both watched in awe as Aiynuur brought her injured arm up in front of her. Shards of glass still lanced her fingers and the back of her hand. They watched as Aiynuur glared at the shards - and each one began to pop out and drop to the ground as if frightened away by her look alone.

Behind them Kankuro heard, and then looked back and saw a cadre of security personnel and confused lab techs begin to exit the facility.

"We've got to go," Kankuro said to Uta, who nodded.

"Please, take me to him," Aiynuur asked, her anger finally seeming to flag a little as the awkward position her impulsiveness had put them in seemed to dawn on her.

Kankuro nodded and swept her up to carry her over the roof tops. Uta followed them closely as they moved as quickly and covertly as they could from the sirens and the milling masses of confused personnel.

Aiynuur stood a few feet away in front of the door to Gaara's room - all her fury arrested as she grew pensive now, afraid of what she must do next. For the last week she'd been practising her healing powers on the only living creatures accessible to her - old stray dogs and three legged cats, of all things.

Her "patients" had all ended up the better for her service, but the magnitude of the value of Gaara's life, and the real differences between animal biology and his were laughably palpable to her now. She lifted her left palm up and held it arm's length in front of his door, casting her energy forward, or sensing what was going on beyond.

The door slid open suddenly. Fumiko-sensei nearly walked face-first into Aiynuur's outstretched palm. Aiynuur let her hand drop as she stepped quickly out of the line of sight of the now opened door. He was awake.

"Who is this?" Fumiko demanded, the tall, lank woman's mouse brown her was escaping in errant wisps from the forehead protector she was using as a headband.

"Fumiko-sensei, this is Aiynuur-sensei," Uta explained.

Fumiko's brown eyes swept over the small woman, still looking critical and confused, as if something about Aiynuur did not sit right.

"I felt...someone at the door," Fumiko explained. Fumiko said "someone", but only for lack of a better word. The woman who to the naked eye stood perfectly formed seemed to - pull and twin, to shift like mercury energetically in front of her. Fumiko-sensei was the Kazekage clan's most talented chakra reader and healer. In all her life she had not encountered anyone that quite felt like this.

Aiynuur took a deep breath to calm herself as the brown haired Kunoichi considered her. This woman was an energy healer, she could feel it. She had been doing just that as they had arrived. In her practice over the last week Aiynuur had given up all pretences of registering as normal in the energetic world. Normally Aiynuur might pause and wonder what she must appear like to this woman, but she didn't have time to worry about that now.

She looked over at Uta-sensei, "You've drained his chest? Let me see the fluid."

Fumiko-sensei looked over at Uta-sensei who nodded affirmatively to her. With an arched brow Fumiko-sensei opened the door and beckoned to someone with Gaara's room. Gaara's nurse, a young man with dark hair appeared in the doorway and listened to Fumiko-sensei's strange request. Perplexed, but obedient the man disappeared and returned a few minutes later, having replaced the drainage bag that was partially filed with the fluid that had drained from his chest.

"Hand it to her, Gen'ichi-san," Uta-sensei instructed, gesturing to Aiynuur, who had been walking tight circles in front of the draped windows of the room.

Aiynuur accepted the plastic bag from the young man's hand. Uta and Fumiko watched as the woman placed her hand on it. Fumiko sensed the pull immediately - it was as if the woman was calling to the corruption there in the bag. Fumiko could feel it somehow - as if a sound that had been almost imperceptible to her before became suddenly recognizable.

Fumiko "listened" without hearing to this rhythm as it became clearer, not louder, but more distinct until it came abruptly to a shuddering halt. The woman held the bag in her hand for a moment as if to confirm something, and then tossed it into the medical waste bin they had set up near the door to his room.

"I need to do this in two phases," Aiynuur said, looking up at Uta-sensei. "And one of those phases needs to happen now," she explained, while still mentally replaying the feeling of the fungal infection's life force in her mind in a loop.

"That's not what we agreed on," Uta said.

Aiynuur stepped up into her face and lowered her voice.

"You were withholding," she said. "You've seen what I can do, and you let him rot in here. You people and your love of secrets will kill him."

"Love of secrets?" Uta asked. "That seems ironic coming from you - a woman who won't even tell anyone her name, or where she came from."

"You trust me or you don't, and he lives or he dies. What's it going to be, sensei?" Aiynuur asked fiercely.

Uta's face was red, but to her credit she held control over her emotions. She looked over at Kankuro, whose square footed stance none-the-less conveyed the anxiety alive in his body at that moment. Fuck, he thought. I'm going to have to make this choice. Temari's not even fucking here to make it with me. He looked at Uta and then back at Aiynuur.

"Do what you need to do, Aiynuur-san," he said.

"Now, it needs to be done now?" Uta asked, disbelieving.

"Yes," Aiynuur replied, as she bound her hair more tightly and walked over to the sink in the kitchen to scrub her hands. "I want to do this now, while he's the strongest he's going to be and while the feeling of the pathogen causing the infection is still fresh in my mind."

Hands washed, Gen'ichi offered her a pair of gloves. Aiynuur refused them. She slid open the door.


	11. Chapter 11

He was so tired, but he couldn't sleep. To Gaara it wasn't the familiarity of this feeling that surprised him so much as the knowledge that it had been so very long since he had last felt this particular type of discomfort. This time his fatigue had nothing to do with the lethargy of being the vessel of the Shukaku, but instead the feeling that he couldn't breath.

Each breath was too short, and his adrenaline was alive with the knowledge of it, even after the draining began. To close his eyes and to rest felt again like losing control - but this time not to a demon, but to death. Had he heard the door slide open? Maybe he was seeing some kind of hallucination, but all the sudden she appeared, standing next to the bed. Strange, he hadn't felt her at all this time, but he did feel what she did next.

Aiynuur's cold hand was a shock to his chest, hot as it was with fever. It seemed her intent was to calm his anxiety, because he felt her energy ooze into him like the flow of a hot spring. His energy rose up to meet hers and his dread was transformed into something else. He felt himself transported.

Gaara stood - no, floated it seemed - back and above her. Staring down over her shoulder at his own too pale body in its narrow bed, two tubes now draining fluid from his side. His lips seemed strangely tinged with blue. Gaara didn't feel fear, because he still felt himself connected to his body through her. The connection was strong, and she was strong. It was almost as if she held his psyche up and out, perhaps so he didn't have to feel what came next. He realized that he could see without turning Uta, Fumiko and Gen'ichi. His brother held back beyond the door, talking to someone on the phone - Temari perhaps.

Gaara was brought back into his body as his lungs heaved, instinctively he clutched at her hand on his chest and his sand, which had lane slack on the floor like dust for the past few days shot upwards, encircling her like a halo, but as if feeling him there too, or understanding her intention, it did not strike her.

He became aware of an alien rhythm in him, contrasted with the sound of his own breath, it beat its own tattoo in his chest, entirely independent of his own respiration. Gaara felt her mind shape the word. There. Her energy invaded him like a knife, and this time his sand did cling to her, but held still, as if a warning. The alien rhythm faltered, fractured, like a thousand synchronized cells falling into discordance. Gaara felt the rhythm slow and stop, then wash away, receding as a new tide - no, not new, an old tide grew.

It was the tide of his own life, his own body, it buoyed up in its wake. How could Gaara not have known it instantly? It seemed to grow like the surge of a storm, and he knew, he felt, that he was that storm. He skated above it like a kite on the up draft of that wind for a moment that felt like always - until he saw it, felt it - a tear opening up in her. A feeling like vertigo - her vertigo ricocheted through him and drew him back into the world.

With the eyes in his body, Gaara now looked at Aiynuur's form. Her own gaze was half lidded and the hand on his chest had grown slack and cold again. She began to fall away. Adrenaline poured into him once more as his sand poured away from her.

"Aiynuur!" the sound of his own body's voice, whole and strong did not even register to him as he pulled her towards him, her body tumbled gracelessly over his form. He cast about for her energy and felt none - only his energy seemed to animate her now, echoing through her. In her he felt a depth that opened up, a yawning gap that had no discernible end. He reached into the darkness and cast about for any trace of her, but there was nothing.

There.

A joy tinged with hysteria seized Gaara as he a felt the flutter of her energy. She was not in that darkness, he realized, but without it. Without him, even. Her energy seemed to float above that echo of himself in her - she was a rainbow film stretched around him - stretched thin. Relieved, he reigned in his projection, and said a prayer of thanks when he heard her breath start again with a gasp.

Incredulous, he realized that his strength again burned through him. Gaara tore the respirator mask from his face and sat up. Aiynuur's form slumped still on the bed and partially over him. Gaara looked up and saw the shocked faces of his attendants, his brother, and now his sister and Shikamaru's among them. Mutely he grabbed the rubber hoses that still snaked from his side and pulled them out before anyone could react or object.

"Don't..." Gaara heard Aiynuur's small voice whisper, as if she could feel what he did to his own skin. "You'll just get an infection again," she said, still slumped over. She looked up, and wearily raised her head and body. She sat at the edge of his bed tiredly and clasped her hand over the twin, now seeping wounds in his side.

"You shouldn't have done that," Aiynuur explained. "Your body needs to drain, or metabolize..." she said. Her other hand was back on his chest, and the crackle of her energy spilled across his lungs once again. This time it felt different, Gaara's breath caught for a moment as her energy did its work.

He breathed in again as she removed her hand. His chest felt so light as if the world had been lifted from it - the feeling of it and the return of his own energy made him feel high. He laughed, and looked to Aiynuur to see if she felt this sensation in him too and saw her skin, grey as ash, her expression slack. Alarmed, he reached out to steady her, to console her but she retreated from his touch.

Aiynuur stood slowly, but firmly - as if she were working hard to telegraph her own solidity to him, despite her grave expression.

"You need to rest," Gaara said to her, revelling in the sound of his own voice again, and trying to intimate without saying that she should stay here and rest with him.

"I will," she said, turning back towards him partially. "And so do you. You might feel like a million bucks right now, soldier boy, but don't you dare over do it. Feel how tired you are and sleep. If you don't, you may undo everything I did to help you today. And then I may not be able to complete this work, and I will not forgive you for that," Aiynuur said firmly. Frowning, her chest hitching in a cough that lasted briefly. Resolutely she turned and walked as steadily as she could past their group of stunned onlookers and through the open door.

Aiynuur sat down heavily on the couch. Clutching her head in her hands. She looked up when she saw someone slide a glass of water in front of where she sat. She looked up and saw Kankuro there.

"Thank you," she said.

Uta-sensei left Fumiko, Gen'ichi and Temari in the room checking out Gaara's vitals. Shikamaru stood back, leaning against the door, staring at the new comer - the one who he and Temari had unwittingly bought the dresses for. Kankuro sat in one of the chairs across the lacquer table as Uta sat down next to Aiynuur on the couch. Without asking, Uta gently clasped Aiynuur's wrist, checking her pulse. Aiynuur let her, allowing her hand to drop away from her face.

Fumiko-sensei joined them, quietly closing the sliding door to the bedroom behind her. She stepped into the space between Aiynuur and the window, and squared her shoulders.

"Aiynuur-sensei, is it?" Fumiko asked. "What was that? What you just did..." the tall woman said, "I've...never felt anything quite like it."

Aiynuur looked at the earnest expression the woman's face. There was no censure there - only a deep disquiet - the look of someone who'd seen one of Aiynuur's ugly miracles for the first time.

Ugly they were, or at least she knew them to be. They were always some sort of brutish and confused until Aiynuur truly got a handle on them. Healing herself she was quite good at by now. She'd had a lot of practice. Making plants grow was easy, earnest creatures that they were. But healing another besides herself - that was messy. Her memories were messy. If it were a map the route would read, "Here be dragons." The secret that she did not, could not tell anyone was that the dragon was her.

She met the eyes of the lanky woman. They were wreathed with smile lines, Aiynuur noted. "I'm afraid...that's a question for another day," Aiynuur said.

Uta had still not let go of her wrist, and now felt her forehead with the back of her hand.

"Well Doc, is my heart still beating?" Aiynuur asked. "You know there are far more accurate ways of checking my temperature, right?"

"Ssshhh..." Uta shushed her. "You're cold and your shoulders are shaking. Excuse me, Kankuro-San, are there extra blankets?" Uta asked.

Kankuro returned a moment later and handed a spare blanket to Uta, who shook it out and put the cloth around the woman's thin shoulders. Aiynuur was thankful for it, but frowned nonetheless. Had she just passed some sort of test? Uta-sensei's manner had changed. Or perhaps it was simply because she was now cast in the role of invalid. Aiynuur only realized she'd been shivering when the shuddering of her shoulders stopped under the warmth of the blanket.

"Thank you," she said.

"Ha...thank you, Aiynuur-san," Kankuro said. "I think? What just happened, anyway?" he asked looking up at Fumiko-sensei.

Fumiko nodded. "His lungs sound and feel like they're clear - the infection that we couldn't shake appears to be gone. He's resting. Well, reading. He said he was too wired to sleep, but that he would 'be obedient' and stay in bed."

"Ha, obedient..." Aiynuur said. So it had worked, suddenly she felt tired. Unbelievably tired. Her eyelids slid shut, irresistibly heavy. "I'm just going to...rest here for awhile," she said, her eyes still closed. The four watched as Aiynuur curled into a tight ball in the corner of the couch and quickly fell asleep.

* * *

Aiynuur was trapped once again in the dream. That man, the man with the surgical mask was there with her. A sick cycling vision played in repeat as she stood locked - unable to intervene. The man held a child, a toddler, over a black floor, a floor so dark it looked almost like a pit.

The illusion of its depth was broken when the man dropped the child like a stone - where its body shattered. It broke like a glass figure into a million pieces, which skittered across the floor. But then...it reformed again like watching a film in reverse, only to play forward.

The bow breaks. Aiynuur was frozen, as unmoving as a tree - she could not form a single word - but she could form a sound, a single low syllable, and she moaned it. "Aaaahh," she said, as the tablou rewound and played again. And played again. And played again.

 _"Aiynuur."_

She woke with a start, pushing herself away from the utterance of her name with such force that she whacked her head on the wall behind the low back of the couch. She could not see his face, but she knew it was him - or at least his clone, crouching down in front of her. Gaara. Aiynuur felt her face flush in the dark, embarrassed by her jumpiness, her nightmares, and also surprised to wake and discover herself still here in his apartment.

"I said no clones," she hissed, rubbing the back of her head, feeling exposed and annoyed.

The clone shrugged.

"You were dreaming - it didn't seem like a good dream," it grabbed a pillow from where it rested on the lacquer table and handed it to her.

"You were in a weird position, but no one had the heart to wake you," he explained.

"I wish someone had," Aiynuur said, now rubbing her sore neck with one hand and reaching out for the pillow he offered her with the other. A sudden loud snore interrupted their exchange - they both looked over to see Kankuro sprawled out, asleep on a cot in the dining area.

"Thank you," she said, accepting the pillow.

"Thank you - for everything today," the clone remarked.

"Don't thank me yet. I'm not done," Aiynuur explained.

"With my lungs healed..." Gaara's clone continued.

"Zip it," Aiynuur said, holding her hand up. "I'm not done yet. I made a promise to your family that I would heal you and I will - completely. No half measures. No mistakes."

"You don't need to prove anything to me," it said.

"It's not about that," Aiynuur admitted. "It's about...a sort of karma, that I think you can help me with."

"Karma?" the clone asked.

"Yes, something that I need to do. Let's talk about it another time, please," Aiynuur asked, scooting her cramped body further down the couch and finally stretching out on it with a feeling of relief.

"Aiynuur-san...I know you said no more clones, but I want you to know that I will be using one more," he explained.

"Ugh, why?" she groaned. It was bad enough he misused his energy this way, and now he wanted her permission?

"Temari and Shikamaru's wedding is today," it said.

"Oh, of course - I'm sorry, of course you'd want to attend. Well, just don't over do it then...No dancing."

"No problem," it said, dryly. Quietly it picked up the blanket she'd been clutching and unfurled it, laying it gently over her. Aiynuur froze, surprised by the intimacy of that small gesture.

"No bed time story?" Aiynuur quipped.

"I don't think you're serious," it said. "Jokes are difficult to...identify in this form, but I suspect that was one."

She smiled, "Yeah, but Gaara..."

"Yes?" it asked.

"It felt good to hear your voice again today."

* * *

Gaara looked at the cat, and the cat looked at him. It was an old grey tabby, and it sat on top of the blanket in his lap. He scratched the space just behind her ears and was pleased to hear a rumble in its chest as it purred. The purring was charming, the drooling of the poor toothless elderly animal was...less charming. He chuckled as the cat rubbed its face against the fingers of his good hand.

"So, three legs, huh?" Gaara said.

"Yes, and that's how I know she can do it," Kankuro explained.

"Hmm..." was all Gaara could say in response.

Sure enough, the cat did have four legs now. They looked identical. The cat seemed to walk a little strangely, as if it wasn't quite used to its wholeness. But Gaara looked at the frayed edges of the old girl's ears. She was clearly a fighter. A fighter and a lover, he mused as he cat continued to purr lustily and drool on him.

"Gross," Kankuro said, scooping up the cat and putting her on the floor.

"She can't help it," Gaara remarked.

"Ugh - whatever, anyway. This is patient number 4. The rest are just like her. Aiynuur-san can do it, and Uta-sensei thinks so too," Kankuro said.

Gaara paused before responding. He wanted to be whole, absolutely. He also wanted to know more about Aiynuur's power - but to experience it more first hand, the idea was - unsettling to say the least. Especially as Aiynuur had described it to him. She would need to regenerate and recompose his very cells to heal his body completely this time.

It wasn't that he didn't particularly trust Aiynuur or the possibility of her power. He knew it. He had lived it. It was the deep seated need inculcated since his childhood to protect himself, to not allow anyone to touch him, that held him back now. The suddenness of Aiynuur's last intervention had been a blessing. She had given him no opportunity to think about it. To say he was out of his comfort zone did not begin to express his how he felt about what Uta, Fumiko and Aiynuur proposed to do that very night.

Temari and Kankuro had anticipated this hesitance in him. Burned though he was yet - thanks to Aiynuur's help, his lungs were strong now, and it was his lung infection that could have killed him. The temptation to find out what life would be like with this new normal was there. No one ever even need to know that his left foot was gone, or that he was scarred. His sand, his second skin, could handily cover for those injuries now that his breath and his energy were returning to him.

Knowing this, Kankuro had brought Gaara his visitor today, to help build his confidence in what the woman could do.

"Uta-sensei thinks that Aiynuur-san was likely some kind of medical genius - before, well, before whatever happened to her...happened to her," Kankuro said, faltering a bit, sheepishly. It was so easy to forget that their strange new ally, who in some ways fit so comfortably among them, held such a void in her past. Addressing that mystery and solving it were among the many things Gaara was looking forward to tackling now his health was restored.

"Yes," Gaara said, watching the old grey cat stand on its haunches hesitantly at first, and then vault itself gracefully from his desk chair to his desk, scattering some of his papers as she did so. "I believe it."


	12. Chapter 12

Karma, Aiynuur thought. She summoned the image of the moon's disk, bright and cloudless, in her mind. She had seen it outside as she and Kankuro had journeyed to the Kage's tower together through the quiet city streets. There was a chill in the village air tonight, and she wrapped the thin blanket she wore like a shall around her more closely as they walked.

The moon's light, however pale, had filled her with a sense of warmth, of purpose. Though the people that they passed on the street would never know her - she would do a good thing for them tonight. Could old debts ever be settled? She didn't know. But she could try. Aiynuur knew she had to try, or risk being forever marked by the scars of what happened at the Farm.

Aiynuur came back to the present, taking a deep breath as she began to scrub her hands furiously under the tap in the room that adjoined the Kage's private surgery. It was so strange how there were some actions that her body seemed to know - like this one, preparing to heal someone.

Although her mind was gone in so many ways, her body and her hands remembered things that surprised her, like this, like sewing, like pealing a piece of fruit in one unbroken strand. She dried her hands carefully, ruing the fact that she was once again wearing scrubs. But a sterile field was necessary, and so it couldn't be helped.

Aiynuur followed Fumiko into the room, only to find to her surprise that their patient remained awake, and was sitting on the operating table - his legs dangling over the sides and his arms crossed tightly over his bare chest despite his injured hand, waiting for her.

"Why are you not sedated?" Aiynuur demanded immediately.

"I'll be much more comfortable if I can remain conscious," Gaara responded coolly, despite the discomfort his body was telegraphing at the moment.

"You will not," Aiynuur said, shaking her head. "I...can only imagine how exposed you must feel by the prospect of losing consciousness, but the pain, the pain will be like nothing you can imagine. Believe me, I know. I can only bare it because I understand it, and I know that it's me."

"I've already spoken with Uta-sensei and Fumiko-sensei about it," Gaara replied, glancing briefly beyond Aiynuur the glass observation window, where Kankuro and Temari now watched. "I'm not unfamiliar with pain, and Fumiko-sensei can help me manage it."

Aiynuur looked to Fumiko. The other woman nodded, if stiffly, as if not entirely happy with the Kazekage's choice either.

"Essentially," Aiynuur continued. If he was going to be this stupid, she wasn't about to sugar coat things for him. "I'm about to flay you alive and regrow your burned skin. For my finishing act I'm going to use all of this," she gestured to a pile of fresh meat and bone, butchered just hours ago, "As the raw materials to regrow your foot. Are you sure? I'm not going to stop. I'm not going to stop for anything - you might scream bloody murder - you might lash out at me...at them. You may even hurt us. And I'm not going to stop if I know that it's working," Aiynuur explained.

Gaara sighed, "I'm in control. I'll remain so. If we must do this, this is how it's going to be done."

He watched her set her jaw and stare him down for a minute. As he looked at her closely, he noticed the pale cast of her skin and the tired rings around her eyes. Aiynuur had been working hard to prepare for this, and the last healing had taken something from her, he knew. He suddenly wondered if she had recovered enough. Before he could ask her, she shook her head.

"Alright, we'll do it your way then," Aiynuur said, her mouth a grim line. "Please lay down."

He swung his feet up and eased his back down onto the cold metal table. The heat in the room had been raised, and a cool sweat had already broken out on his brow. Gaara closed his eyes, uncomfortable with the sight of people, even his friends, standing over him.

It reminded him too much of that time before, when he lost his life and Chiyo-baasama sacrificed herself to save him. Using one of the meditation techniques he learned to manage the foreign consciousness that once lived inside him, he let his focus slacken as he concentrated on his breath and eased into a sort of trance.

He became aware of the feeling of Fumiko's soft energy at his temples. Aiynuur's energy burned like a bright spot beside him, and he felt it unfold and flow over him. Her energy built and receded. Built and receded. In that tidal pressure he felt his own energy begin to relax flow with hers until the distinction between hers and his disappeared. He felt the tide of that energy break over some invisible edge inside of her.

As he felt his energy slide irresistibly over that edge, a heat and light that seared hotter and shone brighter than molten rock enveloped him. He did feel pain - it was more intense than anything he had perceived before. But he stood once again beside it, strangely detached from it. The pain was there, but he did not identify with it. So he was able to stay still despite it. He found he was no longer afraid to open his eyes.

She was there, leaning over him. Aiynuur looked at once entirely different, and all the same. The boundaries of her body seemed to twin and shift even as she stood still with her palm above him. The whites of her eyes had disappeared into a colour of blood so dark it was almost black. He watched as bead of sweat rolled down her cheek and landed upon him. He felt the water evaporate as it touched his chest. She took her right hand lay it firmly on the damaged skin that started at the nape of his neck and continued down his left side.

The touch of her hand seem to pierce him, as it was hotter still than he, but with that touch came such a feeling of compassion. That feeling told him what he wanted once again to be. That feeling swept over him until it lit up the terminus of every nerve in is body.

She swept her hand down the length of his neck and he could feel his skin peel, fray like the cracking of mud dried in the sun. But beneath that rent earth fresh skin emerged. Aiynuur trailed her down to his damaged left fingers. Their form seemed to un-focus for a minute before they reknit again - red and tender but whole. The same energy travelled down his leg to where his left foot ought to be. He felt the ghost of its form there as his energy and hers recast the shape that used to be there.

Her left hand trailed a path down the left side of his body as she walked towards his feet to where her materials lay in a stainless steel container. He could not see what she did there, but he could hear Uta-sensei's gasp as Aiynuur's attention was turned to that box. He watched as she seemed to lift something from it and place it down by where his foot should be. He felt a bright pain and a pressure so intense that he finally did cry out, pulling his energy from her. That gesture, instinctive as it was, was a mistake. Suddenly the feeling of her presence, the balm of that compassion completely left him and his body was on fire again.

"Damn it!" he heard her swear. "Back off!" she said, although to whom he couldn't be sure.

Her energy spread over him again - but this time her touch was not like a tide. It did not recede. He felt that emptiness that he had touched before open up beneath him like a pit. And this time, he was afraid. His energy tore through him and her, like the confused animal it had become. Looking for an outlet, it seemed she would allow it only once. The pressure on his leg started again and he sat up. She no longer touched him - whatever force that she had awoken in him was animating this feeling now.

He looked down at his leg. A reddish blob lay close to where the now raw stump of his leg resided. He watched, awed as the white protrusion of his bone began to grow as nearly imperceptible filaments threaded from that heap of blood, bone and muscle that she had created. He was filled with the same pain yet, but finally he could see its purpose, and that was enough, barely enough to hold him in one place. His body was a hot iron. Her will and his own chakra together told it the shape that it wanted to be, and amazingly it took shape in front of them.

As the bone grew, so did the connective tissue around it, then the muscle and their vessels. As the form at the end of his leg grew and took shape the transformation seemed to slow. He could feel lethargy setting into to him where his own energy had burned so brightly and so fast. He dared to glance over at her. Aiynuur was leaning, white knuckled on a work table a few feet away. Her face wet with sweat, her strange eyes still covered with dark, staring impassively at the transformation that she had set in motion.

Aiynuur too could feel his energy wane and she took a few slow steps to him, and placed her hands gently on his left leg above his foot. He felt the infusion of her energy as the growth sped up again and just as quickly he sensed her profound fatigue. Alarmed, he sat up clumsily. Gaara knew what it felt like to ride the fulcrum that tips as another person's life force drained into his own body. Not again, he thought. Not this time.

His fingers felt thick and slow, but he was able to pry her hands from him easily. Aiynuur did not resist, but he realized it was because she did not need to touch him, the connection was made now, and her waning energy was pouring into him yet. She stepped back and away from him and stumbled to the ground as, too slowly, he threw his legs over the side of the surgery table. He knelt down to where she lay, failing to notice the layers of skin that finally grew over his raw foot.

"Stop this," he demanded, picking up her slack form as her energy continued to flow through him. He felt as that flame began stutter like a guttering light. Her breath barely stirred and for a long moment it seemed to stop completely. Gaara looked at her face and saw that she had lost consciousness.

Without warning that pit in her opened again and it clawed at him. The energy she had jammed into his body tore back into hers with a vengeance. Aiynuur gave a sharp involuntary gasp as she awoke. Relief bloomed in him as he held her against his body, feeling the weak but now consistent flow of her breath.

Aiynuur's body began to shake, and Gaara realized it was with laughter. A strange mania - the sheer relief that this ordeal was over filled him too. But his own laughter caught in his throat, as the sound of the sharp inhalation she took after her own heart stalled played again in his mind's ear. The mania receded, leaving sudden grief in its wake. Grief, and then anger.

Still laughing, Aiynuur lifted her arms and laced them behind his neck, tucking her chin over his shoulder as she did. His body answered hers thoughtlessly, with a will of its own, clutching at her a little too tightly as he stared stunned beyond her shoulder at his now perfect leg and foot.

Gaara splayed and moved his toes. He moved his ankle. It all felt real. What he had seen and felt in his mind played back again. How could it be real? The enormity of it began to trickle into his brain. It joined his anger at the gamble she played with her own life and the mixture began to seethe.

"Are you OK?" It was Uta-sensei who asked, crouching down to look him in the eye.

He must not have answered quickly enough. Gaara heard Aiynuur ask again in a whisper, "Are you OK, Gaara-sama?"

Lost in his grief and anger with her, Gaara's answer was to hold her tighter. He felt her ribs constrict beneath his arms and her breath grow more shallow. Her arms did not move though. They were gently wrapped around him yet, and in her body he felt no strain.

He gripped her tighter still, wanting her to make a sound, to shift, to cry out, to tell him "no". To give him some indication that she cared about that body, and her life which he treasured. Why did he fear he could squeeze her until something snapped, and she would say no word, utter no cry in protest or self defence?

Disgust choked him as the thought he felt formed and stole across his mind. He knew why. He could guess. Here was a hard edge - a rock she could dash herself against, a tool to seek death. That must be it. That must be him. The look of her impassive face as she fell from the Tower flashed in his mind.

"Did you know...that it would kill you?" he asked hollowly, her body so close he could feel the burr of his question resonate in her chest.

"Gaara..." Aiynuur tilted her head to speak that secret more closely to his ear. "The truth is, I'm not sure if I can die," she whispered. "And now you know," Aiynuur continued. He waited suspended for her response. "...I am nearly indestructible. But I do still feel pain. So please, relax, just a little?" Aiynuur asked.

Gaara exhaled, loosening his grip on her and closing his eyes tightly. He felt so ashamed. There was a chance that he had misread her completely. The relief of that suspicion was indescribable.

"It's OK," Aiynuur said, tracing a circle with a hand on his back. "I've got you. We've got you."

Aiynuur could feel the presence of Kankuro, Uta and that other man - the man from the apartment, Temari's fiancée Shikamaru at her back, approaching the pair with some reticence. Gaara seemed so wrapped up in whatever emotion he was feeling that he held her still, so she returned that embrace, unwilling to break it before he did. Where did this reaction come from in him? Aiynuur felt like she had stumbled into a deep vein - a current he kept hidden. A wound, old and abysmal that the trauma of her healing had broken open.

Her mind flitted to something that she'd wondered so many weeks ago when he first began reading to her each evening. What kind of man was free every evening at 9 to read to a lonely woman locked away in a box? Surely not a man with a family or a lover of his own. Maybe it was the kind of man that was just as lonely as she was. She was so lost in this wondering that Aiynuur was totally unprepared for what happened next.

Aiynuur was torn from his arms by Shikamaru. More confused than anything, she did not become alarmed and fight until she saw Uta approach her with the syringe. So this was how it was going to be. Aiynuur knew that there would be a price for revealing more of her freakish gift, but she did not expect it to come so swiftly.

She had no time to prepare a defense, and weak as she was in combat skills her only way to retaliate would mean their injury or death. Still she struggled for a moment instinctively - feeling that familiar panic in her she felt at the Farm whenever they came for her like this.

Aiynuur looked at Uta's face - expecting to see the same hollow calculating look that the scientists who held her always wore. Instead she saw in Uta's dark eyes an incredible sadness. Aiynuur stumbled in her struggling as Uta clasped her now still arm in her hand.

"I know you're afraid, Uta," Aiynuur said to her softly. "I understand."

The sting of the syringe tore into her vein, as the tears began their slow slide down Aiynuur's cheeks. There was wetness there, un-shed, in Uta's eyes as well. Aiynuur knew from previous experience that if she wanted to she could stoke her chi right now and let her metabolism burn through the ichor that ran up her veins, but the look in Uta's eyes stopped her. They were so afraid. What would happen if she did resist? She looked up and saw Gaara shrug off his brother, who had been clutching at his arm and speaking to him in a low voice.

The world went sideways as he approached her, but she was still present enough to look towards him blearily. "You...?" was the only slow word she could form

"No," Gaara said. "No, this was not me," he replied, glaring up at Shikamaru and taking her slackening body from the man's unresisting hands. No, Gaara thought. But, I can't say that it wouldn't have been me, later. Gaara gathered her wilting form up in his arms, clutching at her shoulders and hooking his other arm beneath her knees.

He looked over her slack body to Temari. Temari who still stood in the observation room of the surgery, behind its glass. The light from the observation room lit his sister's form harshly from the top down. She stood rod straight, her arms crossed, her face grim and set, her stare unrelenting.

Never, Gaara reflected, had she looked to him so much like their father, Rasa - the architect of Gaara's early estrangement from the world, the man who's brumal, judgemental gaze, set so much like Temari's right now, greeted his every mistake. Gaara locked eyes with that ghost in his sister's face, and, as he did, he called that thing to him - the sigil and the source of his power, the sand.

Seeing Gaara's expression, and alarmed by the palpable influx of his power, Shikamaru came to his wife's defence.

"Gaara - Temari only meant to..." he began.

"Yes," Gaara hissed at him angrily as his gourd formed neatly and quickly at his hip. "I'm sure she meant to save me from this choice," he said, lowly.

"Temari!" Gaara barked, his demand for her presence clear in those three sharp syllables.

To her credit, Temari did not so much as shake as she walked from her post in the observation room towards her irate brother. She had not seen him so raw as she had today since that time after the Chuunin exams, when Gaara first tasted defeat, and Uzumaki's redemption.

That day Gaara made a choice that changed all their lives. That day, so did she. Temari chose to defend her brother from that moment forward, the brother that to that point she had always left behind to fend for himself - alone in the sand where their father had left him. She had honoured that choice today. And now she would answer for it.

Aiynuur may not mean harm - at the moment. But it was clear that she was powerful. The limits of that power were as yet unplumbed but what they now knew suggested something much more sinister than the awesome display they had seen today.

While Gaara was on the operating table, Temari, Kankuro and Shikamaru had watched and discussed all that happened. It was clear that not only had this woman the incredible ability to manipulate and grow someone else's flesh as well as her own, she could also shape other people's energy.

At first it seemed Aiynuur moulded Gaara's power consensually - but when the work on Gaara's leg began they had watched - and felt, each to their own ability, the struggle between the two. Instinctively perhaps, Gaara had pulled his energy away from her when the pain seem to intensify. And they watched not once but twice, as Aiynuur defied that instinct in him.

The first time she somehow rerouted Gaara's own energy back into his leg and regrowing foot. The second time it was Aiynuur's own energy that she poured into him, without his agreement, and despite the harm it might do to herself. The woman was strong enough, somehow, to redirect an energy as immense as Gaara's, and she was ruthless enough to defy him, and to fail to consult all of them because her end was in sight.

Perhaps Temari had taken Aiynuur's freedom away this time - perhaps she had stolen her brother's choice. As it was, it was a foregone conclusion the first time that Aiynuur hijacked her brother's chi that Temari asked Uta-sensei to prepare a syringe - either for Gaara or Aiynuur when things first went awry.

It was a mixture of a paralytic and a sedative, a cocktail that would take away your muscle control almost instantly before it knocked you out. Temari wondered for a moment if the woman was still conscious as she walked towards them. Aiynuur certainly didn't appear that way, hanging limply there in her brother's arms. Temari stopped a few feet away from Gaara, and bowed lowly.

Gaara eyed her deferential stance and felt his anger flag, but only just.

"You over stepped your bounds. You made a decision that was not your call," he explained, coldly.

"Sir, I..." Temari began, choosing to speak to him as any of his Shinobi would.

"Sir?" Gaara drawled, interrupting her. "I am sure I know what you're about to say, and I'm not interested. Know that I'm in control. Do not presume to make any more decisions for me."

"Yes, Kazekage-sama,"' Temari said, her voice slow and numb, she swallowed against the ache in her throat.

"As it is," Gaara said, "I would have made the same decision. But first I would have had the decency to ask this woman, before...taking other means to contain her. She is dangerous, that's clear. I'm not blind to that. But she has yet committed no crime. In fact she has done me, done us, a great kindness, and so she deserves better than your complete contempt."

"Yes, Kazekage-sama," Temari said again, inclining just a bit more as she did so, if only to avoid meeting her brother's eyes. Why did it feel as if she had just been let go? But, with her leaving Sunagakure to live with Shikamaru's clan yet this week, her dismissal was inevitable. She had envisioned it much differently in her mind. Temari stood back up and began to turn to find Shikamaru and leave, but Gaara's voice halted her again.

"You're not dismissed," Gaara said. "Here," Gaara handed over Aiynuur's sedated body to his sister. Shocked, Temari accepted the woman's body awkwardly, as Gaara turned to Fumiko. "Go and help Uta-sensei bring her to the infirmary," Gaara instructed, giving her a sidelong glance. "Then go home."

Temari nodded, and Gaara was mollified a little by the look of discomfort in his sister's face. His eyes followed Temari as she followed Uta-sensei to the infirmary room. He crossed his arms over his chest wondering at the feeling of his wholeness, of his unscarred skin, and acknowledging that he would rather not let Aiynuur out of his sight but that it was necessary.

In order to convince them all that he was in control, that he was unaffected by their assault and the events of the day, he had to show them his detachment. Asking Temari to carry her body had the twin benefits of showing that detachment and also of making Temari confront palpably the injury that she had brought on the other woman.

Before Temari left the room with Aiynuur's body, she hazarded a glance around the room to see where Shikamaru was. She surprised when she did not see him. Fumiko was checking over Gaara's now healed injuries, and Kankuro was slouching, arms crossed and leaning against the glass of the observation room.

He met her eyes for a moment, and it was clear that he resented her choice, although he had nonetheless assisted it by confronting Gaara while Uta and Shikamaru delivered the paralytic. Maybe she'd been let go from big sister status with him as well. As she stepped through the door, Temari accidentally knocked Aiynuur's shins against the frame. At the moment, she didn't feel too bad about it, though.

Shikamaru stood in front of the window at the end of the hall, outside of the private surgery in the Kage's tower. They had done the healing at night to avoid the people who would have been walking these halls during the day. None the less, there was security, and Nara watched a man dressed in the robes of the Suna guard, pause just out of the street light on the side walk below and light a cigarette as he did his rounds.

Why had he walked out? He had left as soon as Gaara had shoved the woman Aiynuur's slack body in his wife's arms. Nara knew a lesson in humility when he saw it, and he didn't particularly want to watch the tableau of Gaara reasserting himself over Temari - knowing that each of them was right in their actions in their own way, but still unable to acknowledge that fact with one another.

He felt - a sort of disgust, in himself, in watching brother and sister pitted against each other in this petty power struggle. It was a terrible thing getting older. When you were a kid, it was so easy to say you'd make all the decisions your parents made better. You'd make the good choices, the right choices, when your time came.

But there he was, tonight, holding back a struggling, bewildered woman who had saved a man's life and limb - literally. He had held her back, as Aiynuur had told them it was OK, that she understood their terror of her, and allowed them to anaesthetise her.

Yes, he felt disgust in himself, disgust because he did know that Temari was right to do what she did, and that he would have made the same call if it were his. Disgust because here they were - all of them, adults now. Making the same old wrong right decisions that their parents had done before them, over and over again. Trusting, forgiving - somehow these only seemed to be things Uzumaki was really capable of.

What would have happened if this woman had been recovered in Konoha? he wondered. She would probably be playing a late night game of Go with Kabuto-san right now. She would probably be conspiring with them over tea, reviving in Orichimaru and Kabuto hopes for eternal life and physical perfection as she had apparently achieved it. Different looking than what they had always aimed for, but powerful all the same.

But then again - Aiynuur didn't seem the type. After all, if what she had said tonight to Gaara had been true, she had apparently somehow achieved something like what Orichimaru had sought, indestructibility, the capability to mould other's chi, and perhaps with that, their talents. Yet she hadn't harnessed these powers to escape, to seek power. Clearly she was capable of it.

Instead she had told Uta that she understood her fear, as the woman stuck that needle in her arm. Whatever Aiynuur was, she was the victim of it, not the victor. Shikamaru could only wonder if they would punish her for her nature as severely as the Grass had. Would escape from Suna become the next story that this woman would be too ashamed to tell? Fuck this Karma, he thought.

"What a pain," he said, kicking at the baseboard of the floor beneath the window. He turned around as he heard the door to the medical suite open down the hall behind him and watched as Temari walked toward him, her eyes cast down.

"Let's go," she said when she reached him.

"I'm going to stay," Shikamaru replied.

"What?" Temari asked, her face immediately flushing with anger as she looked up at him.

"Hey, I'm not taking their side," he said, opening his arms and pulling her into an embrace. "You made the decision he couldn't, and I think your brother already knows that. But that also pissed him off. What did you expect? Anyway, someone has to watch her tonight, and all of you are tired. Please, let me do this thing for you, for all of you."

Temari sighed, finally relaxing into him. All she wanted to do was to flop into bed with her new husband and oversleep, but he was right. So few knew about the situation at the moment. Someone had to keep tabs on this mess - this woman, and all of them were exhausted, especially Gaara, who likely would try to set sand clones on the task unless the rest of them could convince him not to.

"Fine," Temari said, tiredly. "But get back to me as soon as you can."

"As soon as you can" came more quickly than Shikamaru expected. He was sitting in the infirmary room thumbing through an antique magazine next to the dim glow of a desk lamp when he heard the door to the surgery open. Aiynuur was still asleep.

They had attached Aiynuur to a heart monitor that ran from a plastic clamp on her finger to an ECG. The paralytic they had pumped her with did carry the potential side effect that it might slow or even stop her heart. Shikamaru didn't like being the first on hand in that situation, but the risk was slim and Uta-sensei was asleep on a couch in an office down the hall just in case. Aiynuur's heart beat had risen a few minutes ago but Shikamaru looked closely at her closed eyes and saw her pupils dancing beneath her eyelids. REM sleep. She was dreaming, not waking.

Expecting to see Uta-sensei walking through the door to check in on them, Shikamaru was surprised to see Kankuro instead, wearing his black uniform without its corresponding Noh make-up.

"Hey, Shikamaru. I'm here to relieve you. You can go back to Temari's place," Kankuro said.

Shikamaru stood and crossed his arms over his chest, looking at the other man critically.

"Did Gaara ask you to take over?" Shikamaru asked.

Kankuro stayed silent for a moment, but didn't try to lie.

"No," Kankuro said. "But he will be here shortly."

"He told you this?" Shikamaru asked.

"Nope," Kankuro continued a little sheepishly. "But one of my tracking strings did register him leaving his suite only a few moments ago."

"Hmm..." was Shikamaru's dry reply. Sand sibling drama. He could live with out it. His trip back to Konohagakure with Temari could not come quickly enough.

"Let me guess, you're here to stop him from doing something you think is foolish?" Shikamaru asked.

"Yeah, something like that," Kankuro replied, impressed as he frequently was with the lazy Shinobi's ability to read accurately into events.

Shikamaru sighed and shrugged his shoulders.

"Then I'd rather not be here...Good luck with that," Shikamaru said. He tossed the magazine on the chair, and left shaking his head as he tried to mentally route out a course that would prevent him from running into Gaara accidentally on the way out.

A/N - Are you enjoying the story? I'd love to hear from you. Please comment or send me a PM. :)


	13. Chapter 13

Aiynuur dreamed, and she dreamed of the time when she was nameless. She dreamed of the water trials. The water trials were a phase of their testing that left no marks on her physically - yet they were among the ones that had left the harshest mental scars. To be cut open, to be pulled a part was a nightmare in itself. The water trials - they were beyond. They were the feeling of claustrophobia and slow death itself come over you.

And of course, he was there in her dream. The man with those brown eyes - the eyes that filled with such sick zeal when they lit upon her. How old was the man in the surgical mask? Perhaps in his 40s. His eyes were clear and bright. His face, at least what she could see of it, clean-shaven and angular. His hair long, black with peppered with gray hair but always held back at the nape of his neck.

Although his mouth and nose were perpetually concealed from view, she had ample time to study that face, and the face of her other tormentors. Their faces became landscapes to her - canyons and furrows for her to hide in as they did what they called their work.

She remembered that chilling thing that the man in the mask always said to her before each trial. It was a single word, spoken like a prayer - "Awaken," he would ask her. "Awaken," he would command her. "Awaken," he would beg her. As if she were a sleeper that he was bent to rouse and that these tortures were his tortures too. But this she knew better, for surely he enjoyed them. You had only to look in his eyes.

For a long time, she became convinced that she truly must be asleep. After all - could one really remember one's past in a dream? Could the perverted reality that surrounded her be real? I was all too absurd.

She watched his blurred face from where she stood, beneath the plexiglass cover of what they called the tub. It was truly more of a pit that she could just stand in, large enough side to side for her to reach her arms out without touching if she stood in the center. The plexiglass allowed him to watch her and prevented her from escaping. There was a sharp steel grating on the floor of the pit. The serrates of the grating bit into the soles of her bare feet.

She looked up at him, his was the only face she could see. He stared down with the look like a loving parent - waiting expectantly for her to perform some trick, some feat that they would not name and that she could not seem to master.

Aiynuur shivered in her dream as she heard the clank and rush that signaled the water gate opening. The liquid began to sluice in and she whimpered as it touched her raw feet. It was so cold, and it took so long for the tub to fill. She knew that these things must be intentional. Everything that man did seemed to have the same terrible, unknowable intention.

The water crept up her legs. Then her thighs. Finally her hips. Eventually, it reached the underside of her breasts, as she clasped her arms over them, shaking. Finally, the water reached her shoulders, and her neck beyond as her body began to float in the buoyancy of the liquid. Her hair fanned out around her in a dark plume as her body was slowly subsumed by the water. She always held on for as long as she could, sucking in as much air as possible in that narrowing gap, until it ran out completely, watching him still as he watched her through the fogged glass.

She remembered imagining what it would look like if they traded spaces at that moment, watching that man lose his air, and finally lose his nerve - banging on the plexiglass as she always did, clawing uselessly at the walls and the steel grating, her lungs burning until finally she lost the fight against her body's instincts and she breathed in - feeling the searing pain of the water as it filled her mouth, her lungs, her mind.

During those last moments, she always found herself praying desperately that same prayer that he did - awake. She always did wake, alive somehow. But she found herself each time still in this nightmare place, the Farm.

So she prayed that she would wake this time for real and that she would be somewhere else, somewhere far, far away, in that life, her true life, the one that surely must me be better and saner than this one.

* * *

Aiynuur awoke in a hospital bed. Her body ached. Her head pounded. So did her heart. There was a pressure on her finger, and she could feel the ghost play of human energy on her body. She tried to move and found she was in restraints and whimpered. She was there. She was back. She had awoken at the Farm. Alarmed, she began to struggle desperately at the restraints when a man's shape stepped forward into the orange lamp light that poured in from a window.

A window. The Farm didn't have windows. Aiynuur gasped in relief. She could have cried knowing that she wasn't there again. But the fact remained she was still restrained to a bed and hooked up to a heart monitor. The events of the previous night rushed into her mind as her eyes finally focused on the person in front of her.

"Kankuro-san?" Aiynuur asked.

"Yeah - it's OK. Sorry about the restraints. I'm surprised you're awake. Uta-sensei said she pumped you up with enough knock-out juice to keep you down until noon," he said.

Before she could reply, Aiynuur felt a presence that she immediately recognized - Gaara.

"Gaara's here?" she asked Kankuro. Although having both of them here put a damper on her desire to escape, she did want to know how he was doing after the healing.

"Aah, is he already?" Kankuro asked, leaning in closer to whisper to her. "Look, I didn't expect you to be awake for this bit. Aiynuur-san, do you think you can pretend to be asleep? I need to say something to my brother and if you're awake I don't think he'll listen to me," he explained. _Or worse, he'll interpret this as a pre-meditated breakout._

Aiynuur nodded a bit reluctantly at the strange request. Her half-cocked plan to escape in the dark of the night was not going terribly well. But she would just need to be patient and wait for an opportunity. As for playing possum, that was something she'd done many times with her captors before - amazingly even while connected to an ECG.

"He's about to reach the door," she whispered and lay back down, willing herself to slow her breathing and be patient, even though her animal mind wanted to gnash at her restraints.

Kankuro remained quiet. It was good that Aiynuur could sense Gaara, for his brother truly moved and opened impediments like doors soundlessly with the aide of his natural element. The thought of him walking again felt good and Kankuro held onto that feeling. After all, he was here to do his brother a favor. Someone needed to talk some sense into him, and unbelievably Kankuro found himself the only person who could do it this time.

The door to the infirmary room swung open silently. Gaara's shadow clad silhouette hesitated for just a moment at the threshold before entering. His younger brother was totally expressionless, which Kankuro knew meant that he had taken him by surprise, and he was unsure how to react yet to Kankuro's unexpected presence.

"Where's Shikamaru?" Gaara asked.

"I let him go home. He's a new husband. He shouldn't be spending the night away from his bride," Kankuro explained.

This answer seemed to pass inspection with Gaara. He stepped forward and walked past Kankuro. Gaara looked down at Aiynuur where she lay peacefully, the ECG read a slow and steady beat. He fingered the portion of one of the soft leather restraints that were attached to the metal frame of the bed and frowned down at her still sleeping body.

"You may go," Gaara instructed.

"Why, so you can bury her back in that hole?" Kankuro asked.

Gaara froze. _Not Kankuro too._ He was up to here with his siblings undermining him. He turned with a slow menace, his cut crystal gaze cold and sharp as he locked eyes with his elder brother.

"Yes," Gaara replied. "It will be less traumatic to take her back while she's yet asleep."

"Coward," Kankuro accused. Kankuro winced as he heard the pop and fizz as Gaara's chakra-infused sand pouring out on the floor. Kankuro knew it was theater, that his brother used to unnerve him (probably), and so despite the sudden prickling of sweat on his brow, he continued.

"What was all that about not treating her with contempt earlier? About asking her first?" Kankuro asked, with a mocking lightness. "No, brother, I think you've had a couple of hours to stew over things. And in that time, you lost your nerve to do what's right. And now you're about to punish her - not for who or what she is. No, you're ready to punish her for the way that she makes you feel."

"I'll warn you, I've had enough of insubordination today," Gaara ground out, amassing his energy, preparing to force Kankuro bodily out of the room if he needed to.

"Have you? Have you had enough? Do you think she's had enough of being locked up?" Kankuro said, thinking back to those long hours Aiynuur spent looking at the desert A/V feed, waiting.

"How long do you think you can keep doing that until she hates you, Gaara?" _It was time for the killing blow._ "Or is that the plan, Otouto-kun? Stuff her in the ground so she _does_ hate you, so you don't have to acknowledge what you're feeling. Those feelings are yours, Gaara. Punish yourself for them if you must. Grind them up and burn them if you have to. But don't punish her for it. Think of what she's done for you. For us. Do you have any shame at all?"

Kankuro watched as his brother's hands shook, and then stilled.

"Maybe..." Gaara sighed. "Maybe you're right. But tell me what else I should do if you're so smart, brother. There's no other way to protect her and to protect us at the same time. I've thought about it. I know it's true. There's no other way. If I let her go, she'll die on her own. She was halfway there when we found her. Or she'll be captured and killed by someone else. Or worse. And that...I can not live with."

Kankuro's eyes darted to the ECG. Aiynuur's pulse had jumped for just a moment, but she'd gotten it back under control. Gaara for once was apparently too upset to notice. Kankuro took a deep breath and stepped closer to his brother.

"Gaara, trust is hard. It's hard for all of us. Please consider the possibility that there's another way. Resolve not to punish her for your own feelings, which are no fault of hers. Give her a chance," Kankuro said. "If you don't, you'll only regret it."

They stood there silently for a moment. Gaara's sharp gaze no longer projected a killing intent. _He's thinking. Good._ Kankuro observed.

"You can always whisk her off and lock her back up again at any time, Gaara," Kankuro said. "So give yourself a few hours. Spend some time and think about what I said. You know this person deserves better than this."

With that Kankuro looked back over to where Aiynuur lay momentarily, still convincingly affecting sleep. He nodded his goodbye to his brother and left him to consider what he'd said.

 _Poor Aiynuur,_ Kankuro thought. _If she's still awake, and she probably is, she now has to deal with Gaara brooding moodily over her until he figures out what to do. Please, brother, do yourself a favor and make the right choice. Give her a chance._

* * *

The warmth of the sunlight from the window felt so good on her skin. Her body and her soul was a leaf, soaking in it. Aiynuur's slide into consciousness was a gradual one, exhausted as she was from the work she had performed the night before, as well as her sleep's interruption. She was surprised to find she was laying on her side, as she usually liked to sleep. The constraints they had put on her last night were gone, as well as the pressure of the ECG clip. The quartz bracelets, her jail keeper's "gifts", were gone too.

Last night. Aiynuur had spent her own time thinking about what she had heard, as Gaara had apparently too, while he kept vigil over her. Without opening her eyes she could feel him, resting. Resting but yet awake. He seemed comfortable doing this, maybe it was a shinobi thing.

The vermilion edges of his energy filled her inner eye as it always did when he was near her. It seemed to hold her, much the way the sunlight did. And so for a long time, she lay still, awash in that energy, wondering if she'd have to soon depart from it, the sun and him, once again. Reluctantly, finally, she opened her eyes.

Gaara sat, his back rigid, his arms crossed, on a straight-backed chair a few feet from the bed she lay on. His eyes were closed, and the sunlight lit the pale, nearly transparent hairs of his brows and eyelashes, and that mysterious tattoo above his left eye, "Love."

Love. She thought again of the exchange she overheard between Kankuro and Gaara the night before. _Don't punish her for your feelings._ What exactly were those feelings, she wondered. Could they possibly be...anything resembling affection? Could he really feel something other than pity for someone as strange, as sad, as monstrous as she was? Even now that he was beginning to understand her true nature? She didn't know, and she couldn't really imagine it.

One thing was sure though, Kankuro was right. Up until now, she had borne much at their hands. Good intentioned though she knew him to be based on her impressions of him, and his words last night - she could not be patronized like this. She could not be locked up for her own good. Something must change, or she would grow to hate him. And the thought of that possibility stung.

He could feel her wakefulness, and the calmness in her spirit as she lay there in the light. Here they were together, floating in the eye of the storm. But the eye was passing, and he steered this ship. Resolutely, finally, he opened his eyes.

"There you are," Aiynuur said.

Gaara looked down and smiled, softly for a moment. Then he stood. Aiynuur sat up as well, unsure what he would do next. What had he decided? Was she about to be shoved back under the dark?

She tensed as he took a step forward. Instead of continuing his approach though, he stopped. Looking at her levelly in her eyes, he did something completely unexpected. She watched as he bent at the knees and knelt. Shocked, Aiynuur watched as he placed his hands on his thighs and bowed his head.

"Gaara-sama..." Aiynuur began.

"Ojou-san," Gaara said, staring resolutely at the floor in front of him and choosing not to use that name he had given her. "Please, may I speak? I have something I must say, and I ask you to please do me the kindness to listen, despite...everything that I've done to you. May I do this, please?"

"Um...yes," Aiynuur said, some nameless emotion had arrested the motion of her chest. She held her breath. Gaara sighed as if relieved.

"Thank you. First, I must apologize to you - for holding you captive for all this time. The length of your term in the Bunker was to some extent accidental, as you know. But the fact remains inviolable, unchangeable. It grieves me, but I am powerless to change what has passed. I don't expect your forgiveness, I only wish to let you know my regret for this injury."

"Second, I'd like to thank you. On behalf of my village, on behalf of my family, on behalf of myself. You have shown me a great kindness. One that put your own interests at risk, in this case, your freedom, as it exposed more of your abilities to us, to me. The fact that you should do this is astonishing, not just your ability itself, which is formidable. The act also shows - a remarkable generosity, and a willingness to trust in you. You trusted us to show us your secret, to bring me back from death and infirmity in the process. I am humbled by that trust, and despite...all of my actions up until now...I intend to make myself worthy of it if at all I can."

Gaara paused to breathe, still looking away from her into some middle distance that only he could see.

"And now I'd like to ask you a question, Lady, if I may," he said, finally looking up to meet her eyes. Aiynuur nodded, dumbly. _Is this you, Gaara? Is this who you are?_

"My question is this, what does freedom mean to you?" Gaara asked.

Aiynuur swallowed, surprised by his sudden question about that thing she wanted most.

"Freedom..?" Aiynuur began, trying to think ahead of what he might say to her in response, and realizing that she couldn't begin to imagine what was going on in his head. "Freedom," she began again. "Is...having control over your own body, over your future, over where you go and what you do - those are the things that I want, anyway, when I talk about my freedom," Aiynuur said.

"Am I free then, Lady?" Gaara asked.

"Yes," Aiynuur responded, perplexed. "Surely you must be."

"And what if I told you I am not?" he asked.

"I don't understand," Aiynuur replied.

"I am not," Gaara explained, "Because I love these people, and this place - Sunagakure. I have control over my body, true, but I would gladly, _have gladly_ laid it down for them. I choose to go where they need me to go. I choose to do what they need me to do. Their future is my future because I love them. And my love drives me to serve them as I do. Tell me, Ojou-san, am I free?"

Aiynuur looked at him, her brows knit. "I...I don't know," she replied. "I must admit, I'm confused."

Gaara smiled, a little ruefully at how stupid and obtuse this must all sound to anyone but himself.

"I have...been grappling with some challenging truths," he continued. "I realize I've been doing it all on my own instead of including you in seeking a solution, and that was wrong. The facts I think you already know. The freedom you want, if it means going off on your own alone once again into the wilderness, will likely be short-lived."

"Powerful though you are in those things that you know," Gaara explained. "You are not skilled in combat or survival. You know that's true. Without those skills, recovery by the Grass or capture by others who would exploit you seems inevitable, and what happens next, unenviable, to say the least. This might not trouble you, but it troubles me. Greatly," Gaara said, catching her eyes as he did.

Aiynuur felt a thrush of warmth as heat stole into her face and chest. Overwhelmed, she looked away. Gaara smiled gently at that blush.

"Please, Ojou-san. Won't you look at me?" Gaara asked.

Aiynuur's gaze met his, and he watched her swallow.

"Am I free? I can't say," Gaara continued "But I do want to ask you...if you'll share my freedom with me? Please, try to find something here to love, as I do. There are so many people you could help, as you've helped me. The door is open, yes. You can leave. But won't you stay here a little while with me? At least until I can clear your way?"

The moment hung in the air. He watched her face, looking for some reaction there. Seeing none, and fearing the worst, Gaara placed his palms back on his thighs and cast his gaze downwards again, waiting. _Trust her. Trust her._ He thought, breathing in and out. Why did this feel like the hardest thing he'd ever done?

Aiynuur slid from the hospital bed and knelt in front of him a foot away. She reached forward, slowly, and offered him her hand. Seeing it, Gaara hesitated for a moment, before reaching out with his own. She grasped it, gently.

"Yes," Aiynuur smiled softly. "I think...I can try."

Relief, hot as sunlight, spread over him. Gaara felt the pull to embrace her, but instead, he smiled and held her hand more tightly. Here was a place where they could start. Here was a place where they could stand, shoulder to shoulder and begin again. Hope broke open, and a pale thread took root.

Her other hand joined the first to cover the back of his. He took a deep breath again to smooth the edges of his desire to hold her, for he could see that her face was troubled although she sought him.

"Tell me though," Aiynuur continued, looking up at him, brows knit. "Won't your people be at risk with me here? There's what I am and that fear, which, I am sorry, I have no doubt will surface in time among them. There's also the risk that the Grass will try to recover me, as you say. I don't want anyone to be hurt because of me."

"I will have to ask you to trust me again," Gaara replied, sweeping his thumb over the back of her hand. "I am much stronger than you know."

Aiynuur gave him a sly smile.

"So," she replied. "Am I."


	14. Chapter 14

Uzumaki Naruto never had to knock on the Kabuto's door. The squeals of excited kids hanging off of the Hokage were always already loud enough to announce the man's arrival. Kabuto opened the door to Konoha's only orphanage and, sure enough, there stood the tall blond man wearing his more casual robes of office, two children were already hanging off of his neck and another two off of either bicep.

Shizune-san, who had come out of retirement to help the new Hokage until Naruto could appoint his own number one stood a bit further back, smiling but happy to let the kids clamber all over the Kage instead of her. She held a large shiny white paper bag in her arms.

"Hey, good afternoon, Kabuto-sensei!" Naruto said. "Sorry to come by unannounced, but I brought back some souvenirs for the kids from my trip to Mizugakure last week. I thought I'd give them to them now if that's alright."

"Ah, hello Hokage-sama," Kabuto said, smiling if a little wanly. "Of course you're welcome! Please won't you both come in? You know the children always love the gifts you bring them..."

I only wish Emi-san and I did too, Kabuto thought inwardly. Uzumaki-sama had a tendency to be rather martial about his toy choices for the children. The last round of gifts had all been wooden souvenir samurai swords from Iron Country. You'd think that a small wooden sword wouldn't be so tiresome, but give them to 23 boisterous kids of various sizes and ages, and what you got were two adult guardians with a lot of shin and knee injuries.

Despite the occasional inadvisable gifts for the kids though, it was wonderful that the Hokage found time to visit about once a month, and Kabuto did appreciate the increased funding they had begun to receive. Naruto had a natural charisma that made him good with children too, and often Hinata-san and their two children would join them as well. It was good for the kids to have a role model like the Seventh to look up to. After all, he had grown up an orphan too, and now he was their Hokage. It didn't get better than that.

An orphan as well, Kabuto would never dare say the same of himself. Kabuto had redeemed himself in many ways over the past decade since his time in the service of Orichimaru, and his own perverted quest for perfection. Regardless, those dark stretches in his past would always cast a shade on him. But he was here now. Thanks to the second chance he'd been granted, Kabuto had a precious gift that few men could claim, he knew he was on Earth doing exactly what he should be doing. And that was what mattered now.

Uzumaki had to squat and walk sideways, like a lame crab through the entranceway to avoid knocking any of his passengers against the door frame.

"Kids!" Kabuto scolded lightly. "What did I say about climbing out of the yard, and about jumping all over Hokage-sama?"

The lip of one of the little girls trembled defiantly. "But, the 'Okage said it's OK, and he's the boss of all of us which means he's the boss of you too, Sensei!"

Annoyed, Kabuto was nonetheless impressed by this bit of indisputable four year-old logic. Naruto laughed heartily and began setting the children down one by one.

"Hey, you must listen to Kabuto-sensei only going forward. He's the squad leader of the orphanage, OK?" Uzumaki said, winking at the girl, who saluted and smiled, and then ran off with the other three to tell the rest of the kid's about the 'Okage's arrival.

Kabuto turned his attention to Shizune as she entered the door.

"Please, Shizune-san, may I take that bag for you?" Kabuto asked.

"Yes, thank you," Shizune said, smiling as she handed the white bag to Kabuto.

Shizune smile turned a bit sheepish as she watched Kabuto subtly palpate the bag, curious to know what horror awaited him inside. She leaned over and whispered in his ear.

"Water pistols," she said.

"Haaah..." The cloud that had suddenly developed over Kabuto's head was nearly visible. Shizune gave him a friendly pat on the shoulder.

"I'll advocate for candy again next time," she said, and Kabuto nodded. Truthfully 23 kids high on sugar wasn't much better, but it at least was a one-time assault.

The affable, warm voice of Emi, the older woman who cooked and helped Kabuto run the orphanage was heard from the direction of the kitchen.

"Aaaah! Is that the young man Uzumaki I hear? Come on in! I'll start some tea!"

Kabuto cringed a bit at Emi-san's chronically familiar nature. But that was the wonderful think about Emi-san. Anyone younger than she was became an honorary child or grandkid instantly, even if they were an adult.

"Emi-bachan," Naruto said. "Tea sounds great. If you don't mind, Kabuto-sensei, and I will have some in the office. I need to speak with him privately."

Surprised, Kabuto looked over at Naturo's face.

"Hey, I'm sorry to ask, but I have a job, and a favor to ask of you, Kabuto-sensei," Naturto said. "It's for a friend."

Slats of sunlight from the shades in Kabuto's office fell across the photograph of a woman's haggard face. She looked as if she would be a beauty had she not fallen on what must have been hard times. As she was in the photo, she looked like a shell.

Her eyes and cheeks were hallowed with undernourishment, her long black hair was matted and disheveled. A bruise was fading from blue to green on her forehead. Her eyes were closed in the photo, and from the angle and background, Kabuto could tell without any explanation that the picture had been taken from above while she was unconscious. Unconscious and lying on what looked like a metal surgery table.

"There are other photos in the folio," Uzumaki-sama said, with a sense of gravity that Kabuto-san rarely saw in the man except when he talked about the Village or business. "I'll warn you. They ain't easy to look at. If you accept, you can look at them once. But you can only keep this one," Naruto explained, tapping his finger on the photo in front of him. "The rest will be destroyed as my friend requested."

"If I accept this mission?" Kabuto asked. "I am sorry, Hokage-sama, but, as you know, I am no longer a shinobi."

Naruto nodded, eying the brown folio that his friend had passed on to him not so long ago. Gaara had received it from one of his personal couriers on Summoning Island just before they had left. That was when Gaara had shared the more complete story of the mystery woman from the desert - the cactus woman, as she was known in Konoha's rumor.

Naruto had sat back and listened closely to Gaara's story and his request. It was not like the man to ask for anything resembling a personal favor. What was curious to Naruto was that nothing about the woman's case seemed to be personal, at least as Gaara described it. Asking for the help of an expert in a case like this from an ally only made sense, especially given it exposed a potential risk in Grass to both of their nations.

Naruto suspected there was a dimension to this story that Gaara was not telling him, and that dimension was all about what made this woman and the need to know her identity personal to Gaara. But after seeing the photos, Uzumaki found he didn't have the stomach to press for any potentially embarrassing details from his friend.

Whatever this woman had suffered was all too real, all too serious. What it represented - the prospect that the Grass, a quasi-allied country was performing human experiments like this - was not only against the human rights charter of the Five, it also did not bode well for the peace they sought to maintain now after the Fourth Shinobi War.

There were rumblings from many of the unallied countries. Grass was not alone. The five nations were too strong, they said. From within the five nations, ironically, there were dissenters who rallied instead that the five nations were too weak. That in joining hands with one another, the Villages were becoming like toothless old hens in this time of peace, scurrying to consult one another over every squabble, when they ought to be standing apart as men.

Sometimes Naruto felt that the real job of he and his fellow Kages was actually holding the lid down on a boiling pot, so it didn't well up and burn all of them, the innocent in particular, he thought as he heard the sound of the children calling to one another outside.

And now his friend had fallen in an act of terrorism. Gaara, the very man who had entrusted him with this mission. Naruto had asked for assurance from Temari before he left Sunagakure that he would be updated on how Gaara recovered. Temari had simply nodded stiffly to him, and Naruto was grateful again for Shikamaru's engagement in that moment.

He could tell by Temari's expression how vulnerable she felt seeing her brother so undone. Temari was not going to share any more information than the bare minimum, and it was possible that what she would share may not be truthful. Not out of malice, but out of reflex, the type of reflex you return to when you're in a corner. Nara would have to bring Naruto the truth about his friend in her place, although he would have to be careful to respect the man's boundaries.

As it was, Naruto had heard third-hand already that Gaara was on the mend, even back in his own apartments. Naruto had sent word via their digital back channels that he would be contacting who Naruto referred to only as "the consultant", per Gaara's requested. Naruto could do nothing to heal his friend's wounds. Maybe he could at least help him solve this mystery.

"Why me, Hokage-sama?" Kabuto asked. "Why this mission?"

Naruto nodded. A Shinobi wouldn't have asked questions. But a man who had given up that life to serve these children was, in Naruto's opinion, entlted to them.

"It's because of your past, Kabuto-sensei," Naruto began.

* * *

Surprised, Gaara looked down and read the message again. Typed out in the angular font of the feed, it read:

SPECIAL CONSULTANT HAS IDENTIFIED LEAD. PARLEY REQUESTED ON SECURED LINE.

"Excuse me, Temari - are there any other messages like this one from Konoha?"

It was two days after Gaara's healing and he was back in his office again, sorting through the mountain of paperwork dubbed non-essential in his absence. Gaara chose not to make any fanfare or prior announcement about his complete return to work, simply choosing to arrive in his office at 5 am, before anyone else did except the night patrol. As people trickled in the news gradually spread from Sari his assistant to others that the Kazekage was back in his office today, apropos of nothing, looking - despite the rumors about his having been burned and dismembered - completely healthy and whole.

The lack of explanation on his part was diversionary. Suna's gossip mill would come to any number of conclusions about what exactly had happened to the Kazekage, and why it had apparently taken him so long to fully recover. He had asked Kankuro to fill the void with the suggestion that, rather than convalescing all this time, he had in fact been away on an important and secret engagement. In a way, he had. But that engagement had been a private struggle with his own body for survival. The Council Elders would demand an answer, and to them he'd tell the truth, that he'd been recovering. But knowing him and trusting in his abilities, he knew they would suspect the rumor was true. Thus he could save face without lying to him.

Gaara left his door open yesterday and today to allow those who found excuses to come in and communicate with Sari to catch a glimpse of him there at his desk. It would do morale good. Later today he would drop by the training grounds for a random inspection. It would be another boost for his people to see him there, and it would be a chance for him to illustrate to everyone that his skills were intact by asking the shinobi present to test themselves against his defenses.

He and Temari were still not really back on proper speaking terms, Gaara reflected as he watched his sister shuffle through the piles of paper that had collected on her own make-shift desk while he was away. They were both still upset with each other. Gaara at Temari's usurpation of his will, and she at his censure and at the admission of Aiynuur fully into the fold of life in the Hidden Village.

Gaara let his frustration with his older sister play out in his apparent indifference about the whole situation. Truthfully, Gaara hoped to make peace with her before she left in two days. In the mean time his inscrutability, and his aloofness both for Temari, and apparently for Aiynuur, he hoped would put his sister in her place, and undercut the concerns that she had that he was...compromised where the woman was concerned.

The woman, Aiynuur - figuring out what to do with her and quickly had been difficult to say the least. Understandably Aiynuur had not wanted to stay in the Bunker another night, and so she had spent yesterday and most of the night in the private infirmary, working out and memorizing the details of a back story for herself with Kankuro and the only other people they could consult - Migime and Hidarime. The two men from the Lookout were overjoyed to see the Kazekage in the flesh again, and they were also excited to meet the woman who they had watched over for so long.

It was Hidarime who turned out to be the best asset in their cover-up in a couple of ways. In addition to his more technical tendencies as a member of the Lookout, the man also indulged in writing a lot of creative fiction, which gave him a good mind for dissemblance. Given Aiynuur's natural abilities with plants, he suggested that she reenter the city as a plant biologist and as the daughter of a clan from the Flower Country.

Travel from Flower Country was as difficult as it was remote, and visitors were rare in Suna but not unheard of. The passion for flora that the native inhabitants of the Flower's island was well-known. Aiynuur would travel to Suna ostensibly to study the medical plants of the desert. Paperwork documenting that Sunagakure had been notified of her intentions and approved them in advance would have to be forged and backfilled, but that was possible. In the current climate with regular admission of registered foreigners within the City's walls, the request was not remarkable.

As a registered foreigner working on a humanitarian mission for her nation, Aiynuur would be granted an apartment in the Annex building near the barracks. The housing was modest, but gratefully for Aiynuur above ground. She would arrive with currency in hand to support herself, and an additional grant to support good relations with Flower Country could be made available if needed.

To help conceal her identity from the members of Ebisu's Team 9 and anyone else who might recognize her, Aiynuur agreed to wear something that covered her face public at all times. In a town full of shinobi such a practice was not uncommon. This narrative took care of many of the problems presented by her sudden appearance in the City; however, there was still the problem of a name. Here again, Hidarime was ready with an answer.

"Why not just Ai?" he asked. "I hope you don't mind it, Aiynuur-san, but Migime and I have already been calling you by that name already in private. Ai would only be a shortened version of the name you already have. Less confusing that way, yeah?"

"Sure that sounds fine, but why would I mind?" Aiynuur had asked.

"Love," Gaara introjected, before realizing that perhaps Hidarime had been apologizing for giving her a nickname without her permission. "It means love," he elaborated, compelled to complete the thought, but feeling a bit embarrassed.

"Oh, well, there's nothing wrong with that," Aiynuur smiled shyly. "Unless it's a strange name for some reason?" she asked, her gaze lingering for a moment on the character upon his brow.

"Of course not!" Hidarime responded loudly. "And this way we can keep calling you Ai-chan!" he continued, slapping Migime on the back.

"Hey now, don't be so familiar with her, Hidari!" Migime scolded.

In departing, Gaara had to explain to Aiynuur a truth that she thankfully already understood. From here on out, when they met in public, they would be strangers. In a way, they already were, he realized. She knew little to nothing of him, her true identity was a mystery even to her, and she had still left so much of her time at the Farm, as she called it, unspoken.

And yet, the denial of that intimacy that they did have stung. Nonetheless, it was so. It had to be. At least for now. If it bothered her too, Gaara couldn't say, she had smiled at him in understanding. And what was more told him she understood that his world was so much bigger than her problems. He surely had a lot of work to do. She was glad that he had the health now to do it.

So was he, and in that moment as he looked at her he felt again an emotion, and such gratitude for what she had done and that she had stayed when he asked. He would keep his promise. He would clear a path for her by discovering her history and routing out those that would seek her, absolutely. Gaara had still not forgotten about the scars her captors had left on her body. Whoever they were, wherever they were, if they had forgotten, they would soon be reminded.

And so with currency, supplies, and a plausibly beat up ruck sack in hand, Aiynuur left under cover of night with Kankuro. They were to stop by the Bunker so Aiynuur could pick up some of her few possessions there, and then walk out to a suitable distance and join up with the typical trail into Suna.

Ai would then arrive mid-morning at the Registry in town for processing and the Suna welcome tour given to all visiting foreigners. Gaara felt anxiety about the thought of Aiynuur making the journey back into the City by herself. He felt the urge to track her with the Eye of Sand. But she had agreed to this, and he would have to trust her or the new dynamic they had would not work. Regardless, he would breathe easier when he heard word that she was in the City from the Lookout team.

"Here," Temari's gruff voice interrupted Gaara's thoughts as she thrust a folder in his face.

"Thank you," he said, ignoring her rudeness as he collected it from her.

Inside the folder Gaara found just three other messages, all encoded and marked as from the Hokage's private feed. The first was a notification that the consultant - Kabuto - would be procured. The second a check-in that the consultant had entered the subject's "nation of origin", which in this case Gaara took to mean the Grass nation. The second to last was a report that the consultant had not filed their update on time, with a note regarding what would be done if they were not heard from again within the fail safe deadline.

And here in his hand was the fourth, proof that not only had Kabuto been able to report back, he had found something. Perhaps Kabuto had solved the mystery of Aiynuur's identity, or the truth about the place where she had been imprisoned. Would she be glad to know it? Gaara wondered. His time sick had crawled so slowly. He was only two days back in the real world and things seemed to be moving so fast. Gaara punched the com line on his new desk.

"Sari-san? Will you make arrangements with the Hokage's office? I'd like to schedule a time to discuss business with him on a secure line at his soonest convenience, please."

"Yes, Kazekage-sama," Sari said over the line. Gaara could hear the smile in her voice. His assistant was glad to have her boss back. Although, after hearing what had transpired between Sari and Aiynuur the night that Aiynuur had first showed up at his door, Gaara knew that Sari might be upset to know just what regaining his current health had entailed.

The phone rang on Gaara's desk. He picked up the receiver and heard Migime's calm voice on the other end, "Our visitor has arrived," he said simply.

"Understood. Thank you," was Gaara's reply. He hung up the phone and stood. Temari looked at him quizzically. They were no where near done. Her younger brother didn't particularly like paperwork, but he wasn't one to shirk a duty.

"Temari - you're starting a new life in two days," Gaara remarked.

Temari said nothing, the color in her face rising as she sensed correctly that Gaara wanted to find some sort of closure over their recent dispute. Was he about to demand an apology from her?

"Let me take you out to lunch," Gaara said instead.

"...Uh, alright," was Temari's reply.

Unlike Kankuro, she squabbled rarely with Gaara. So unstable as a child, as an adult it seemed as if Gaara always sought to overcompensate for the fear he believed people had of his emotions. Where other men brawled and blustered, Gaara was level headed and forgiving.

That's why Temari had found herself unable to get her footing on the cold shoulder he'd presented her with after their disagreement over what to do with the Grass woman. And now this, a total reversal in his mood! Why? But it was true, she was leaving soon. It would be stupid to hold onto what had happened. Perhaps she could even talk some sense into him over lunch.

"After lunch, I'm going to go to the main training grounds. Reassuring people with my presence is more important than catching up on this backlog right now," Gaara explained.

"They'll be glad to see you," Temari said, offering him a conciliatory nod.

"I'll be glad to see them too," Gaara smiled at her, a genuine smile. It felt good to be back. It felt good to be alive. He couldn't show anyone any indication that he knew Aiynuur at the moment, but with any luck, maybe he'd catch a glimpse of her on the street - his streets. He was back, and the person who helped him get there was finally becoming a part of his world.


	15. Chapter 15

The round-faced, brown-haired teenager that bounded up in front of Aiynuur looked to be maybe 13 or 14, but the symbol of her status as what Kankuro had called a Chuunin, a sort of junior shinobi, was tied with a jaunty flair around her neck.

 _There was no way I was a shinobi in my past life. The idea of a teenager fighting in life or death situations for pay seemed so wrong._ She thought about Gaara, how he and his siblings must have been at that age. _What was he like at age 13?_

"My name is Misako. Nice to meet you! I'll be your guide to the City and get you set up today," the girl said brightly.

"My name is Ai," Aiynuur replied. "Thanks for showing me around Sunagakure today. I'm looking forward to learning all I can."

That was certainly true. Aiynuur felt like a fish out of water. Knowledge was what she needed to submerse herself in. Stumbling around in the wilderness, there was no one around to expect you to know what you were doing or act like a normal human. The prospect of reintegrating with society while maintaining a fictitious identity frankly scared the shit out of her. She hoped that being a foreigner would be enough to explain away any strangeness she had.

Aiynuur wondered how long it would take for her to screw something up, or worse - to meet someone genuinely from the Flower Country. To make matters worse, the low-grade headache that the chakra of humanity gave her was back today, throbbing lowly in her forehead.

What was it about human energy that bothered her so much? Was it the directionality of it? Plants had such simple desires. Humans were a whirlwind of half-formed intentions, electricity dashing everywhere at once. Except for Gaara - it was interesting, but he managed to keep his energy so amazingly calm, right up until the moment that he needed it. What had made him so disciplined about it? Was it an expression of his personality? Of his level? Or something else?

At least Aiynuur's morning had gone fairly well so far. Getting through Suna's Registry of Foreign Agents was quick. She had barely slept the night before, cramming every bit of information about the Flower Country just in case anyone asked her about her country of origin. She had breezed through the interview, the woman who processed her and checked her bag barely looked at her. Perhaps the woman didn't bother with scrutiny, knowing what was coming next.

Next, there had been the uncomfortable ID process. Every foreigner intending to stay in Sunagakure had a physical description logged, as well as being fingerprinted and photographed. Everyone was photographed with and without their face gear on, which meant potentially exposing her identity. To make matters worse, the man who had the job of photographer fancied himself a lady killer.

Hideki was his name, and if he enjoyed making awkward advances at women, he'd picked his profession well. It gave him the excuse to ogle under the pretenses of doing his job. At first, Aiynuur wasn't even sure that's what he was doing - in all of her remembered life, being treated as an object of, well, romantic desire had never come up. There was the incident of Gaara's unexpected gifts - but surely that had been - some kind of gesture of apology, after all?

The ID process started with Hideki making a physical description of her to a tape recorder, which was objective enough until he ended it with the words, "Overall, 10 out of 10." Confused she asked him what that meant and he had only given her a wolfish grin. Next came the photo - when she hesitated to remove the mask that covered the lower part of her face Hideki winked at her and told her that, "If you behave, no one will look at these except me."

Realization finally dawned on Aiynuur about the overtones of his behavior, and this admission from him did not provide the comfort that perhaps he intended. It was interesting. The man was not hard to look at she supposed - but how could this unctuous attitude work on any woman? Maybe it did? A stopped clock was right twice a day, after all - maybe for Hideki he succeeded despite himself occasionally. Every woman had needs, she supposed. Although to Aiynuur, those needs were for others. Namely, people - a group she did not currently number herself among.

Aiynuur finally relented and pulled the chin mask off.

"If I had that face, I wouldn't hide it, Miss Ai," he said smoothly, before handing her a freshly minted ID badge, along with a handwritten note with his name and phone number on it. "If you need someone to show you around town, give Hideki a call."

It took all her self-control not to roll her eyes when he referred to himself in the third person. Aiynuur could feel his energy crawling up her back until she got out of sight of him. Was this what Suna was going to be like? Being among people was strange. Being treated like...anything other than a lab specimen or a pseudo-prisoner was strange. Poor Hideki, if only he had known he was making eyes at an alien, at a creature so removed from human that he would shit himself if he knew what she could do.

Meeting up with Misako in the lobby had been such a relief. The girl's upbeat and noninvasive energy was something that Aiynuur could rest easily beside.

"So, what's on the agenda, Misako-san?" Aiynuur asked.

"That's up to you," she replied, eyes bright. "If you want, I can take you on a tour of the City right away, or I could show you to the Annex and you can get cleaned up and rest. Whatcha think?"

"Why don't we drop off my bag, and then you can take me around the City right now."

"Sure! I'll show you the reference library and the greenhouses first - since you'll be doing a lot of work there. Then maybe we can check out the market," Misako suggested.

"The market would be great. I'd like to get something to eat," Aiynuur explained.

"Oh! I know all the best places to take you!" the girl chirped excitedly. "Have you ever had melon bread before?"

"No," Aiynuur smiled. "But that sounds great!"

* * *

Aiynuur could feel the pull before it became apparent to Misako. There was a mass of people trickling through the streets of Suna, and they all - mysteriously - seemed to be heading in the same direction. Ai tried to bring the question up casually.

"I love these, by the way," Aiynuur remarked after finishing another bite of what Misako had called melon bread. They had just bought some from a kind looking baker. Misako and Aiynuur had toured around the greenhouses and the library. Both were much bigger than Aiynuur had expected, and much of the spaces were newer. Aiynuur suspected their expansion was Gaara's work. Those priorities seemed like him.

"Hey," Aiynuur continued, "is there some kind of like, event going on today? It's just that there seem to be people all leaving the marketplace and heading in the same direction."

"Oh," Misako said, looking around at the thinning crowd. As they watched, a woman ran up to another one The two conferred for a moment, and then left at a jog together in the direction of the human flow that Aiynuur felt.

"Excuse me, sir," Misako asked, turning back to the baker. "Is there something going on today? I didn't think there were any trials or matches scheduled," Misako said.

"Ah!" The man's eyes creased into a smile. "It's the Kazekage - he's back! He's over at the main training grounds right now watching the exercises. Almost everyone has gone to see him. I may just have to close up and see if I can go feed some hungry spectators."

"Wow, the Kazekage!" Aiynuur remarked with a secret smile. It was endearing to see Gaara from the perspective of the Villagers. It's clear they revered him.

He had been so lately her jail keeper, then an absence that burned in her, then a patient, and now - and now what? What was he now? Still a friend, she hoped? Where did she fit in this widening world that was unfolding in front of her? What a strange place she must have occupied in it, to him, the crazy woman from the desert, who asked him for stories and a clock.

"Oh, would you like to see him?" Misako enthused. "I mean, from a far? We probably won't be able to get that close. Visitors aren't usually allowed in the grounds but..."

"...But you really want to see him too, don't you?" Aiynuur smiled conspiratorially.

The girl nodded.

"Let's go then!" Aiynuur said.

* * *

As they got closer to what Misako identified the grounds, Aiynuur started to sweat. The thrum of humanity, constant in the City, was concentrated like a swarm of light in her mind's eye. Somehow her brain was becoming numb to the extremes of the City, but there was something in her body that could not do the same. She felt the perspiration pool at the back of her knees and at her temples.

Strangely though, Aiynuur still felt pulled towards it, perhaps as all of them did on a subconscious level. The energy in the City had a direction at the moment, and that direction was towards him. She also acknowledged that if she was ever going to attempt "being normal", confronting her chakra sense and not letting it master her was a part of the process. To battle the discomfort of it, she asked Misako questions as if it didn't feel like her skin was trying to crawl around to the other side of her body.

"Misako-san, it's funny," Aiynuur began. "But I realize I don't know that much about the Kazekage. Since we're going to catch a glimpse of him, can you tell me more about him?" Aiynuur asked as they followed the flow of people.

"Godaime-sama?" Misako looked at Ai owlishly. To Misako, the idea of anyone not knowing about the Kazekage was hard to believe. He was a legend, had been a legend since before she was born. He was Suna's leader and guardian, omnipresent as the sands that circled the City. To Misako, it was impossible to imagine a world without the quiet knowledge that the Kazekage was there, watching out for all of them.

Powerful as he was, Gaara was a man positioned to exploit that curious juncture between the believable and the fantastic. Among Suna's youngest citizens, the ones who never knew him as that savage lonely boy, the Jinchuuriki, that air of the elemental had taken on a new dimension. If someone was saved from a terrible fall by the invisible hand of luck, or if the sands were good for dune sledding that day - then the Kazekage did it.

That sense of myth had made his physical absence over the past few weeks an intense one for everyone in Suna. The young because it was their first impression of the Kazekage as a mortal man. For their elders, it was a reminder of that other time that he was stolen from the Sand, and the hardship that followed. All in all, it was a reminder of their dependence on him, and so they all went together to see their legend, alive and well again.

"Yes, for instance, how is it that he's so terribly powerful?" Aiynuur asked.

"His strength? Well, Gaara-sama was a Jinchuuriki, of course," Misako explained.

"A Jinchuuriki, what's that?" Ai asked.

Misako was so surprised by the question that she paused in her tracks.

"Wow, you're really not from around here! You don't know what a Jinchuuriki is? I guess you never had any in the Flower Nation," Misako commented. "The Jinchuuriki were the vessels of the tailed beasts of course!" Misako said with a flourish as if that explained everything.

"Oh, the tailed beasts, right!" Ai said with plasticine cheer. She made a mental note to look this up later. She wanted to walk the line between the believable ignorance of a foreigner and what she really ought to know as a person alive and breathing in this world.

Jinchuuriki? Tailed beast? The words brought up none of the encyclopedic explanations that she often surprised herself by having. The world that Aiynuur found herself in was quickly becoming complicated. And Gaara had been a Jinchuuriki, a vessel for a tailed beast? The tailed beasts must be something with enormous power then, Ai reflected. But he no longer contained this thing? And yet he still held this unbelievable strength? It was all very confusing

A container of a thing - was she one of these? Aiynuur had wondered many long hours what made her different from everyone around her during her time under the dark. She recognized quickly that this difference in her was the reason for her incarceration. And it was that reason that caused the masked man to dog her so in his cruel games to make her "awaken".

Was she one of these things too? Did Gaara know something about her that she didn't? Is that why they didn't prod at her as the others did - because they understood what she was? But surely that couldn't be true. Aiynuur's mind throbbed. The painful pulsing deepened, and so did the volume level around them as they turned a corner onto an open plaza with a huge arena at its end.

"Oh, wow," was all Aiynuur could say as she gazed up at the coliseum that was Suna's largest training ground. It reminded her immediately of that great monolith in the desert, the wall that had barred her path just before she was apprehended by Ebisu and his team. From where they were at the opposite end of the plaza, it was four expansive levels high, punctuated with large archways that held statue's of stern faces within each. The building appeared to be seamless as if built without mortar or brick, just as the wall in the desert had.

"Yeah, neat huh? During an event, it can hold up to 30,000 spectators. Gaara-sama helped make it!" Misako chirped.

"Oh, of course, he did," Aiynuur said, slipping reflexively into sarcasm, her first natural defense. He probably got the sun to rise too, she thought, swallowing against the feeling of fright in her throat. There in that structure, shining in her mind's eye like a forest fire, was the chakra of thousands upon thousands of people. Many of them had the outlandish chi of shinobi. And in that conflagration, he stood, somehow still identifiable to her among the rest. Ai swallowed and felt the urge to let her feet take her away.

Aiynuur stopped moving forward. Misako seemed to register for the first time the distress of her companion.

"Are you feeling alright, Ai-san? Maybe you're tired from your journey after all?" Misako asked helpfully, concern on her face.

Aiynuur took a deep breath. Alright, at the moment the energy was just - light. Surely light was harmless? She felt the borders of her own guard and found the seams strong, nothing was slipping past her. She was in her own skin. She was not weak. She could do this.

"You know, maybe I am," Aiynuur admitted. "But, I'd like to try anyway," she said.

"Good! Come with me, I know a shortcut to get inside," Misako said.

Instead of heading towards one of the choked entrances, Misako took Aiynuur around to what looked like little more than a drainage tunnel. Misako winked at her, "Service entrance number 5!" she said.

Aiynuur gave her a weak smile and nodded, the blaze of human chakra burning now above them was still awesome, but not as overwhelming as she feared it might be. The path they were taking led them blissfully down and away from it on a declining ramp.

"Stop!" the sound of a boy's voice was heard above them. Aiynuur and Misako paused, and Misako smiled up at a wild-haired boy with a dark complexion and a serious face who looked down at them. He stood at ground level, his Suna headband tied around his forehead.

"Hey, Tobi! I have a favor to ask you! This is Ai-san. She's a non-com - what do you say, can you sneak us into the arena?"

Tobi grimaced and then seemed to shift self-consciously as he looked down at Misako. Aiynuur suspected the boy might have a crush on the upbeat, round-faced girl. Tobi frowned and jumped down in front of their path, trying to front the coolest professionalism despite his somewhat flustered state.

"ID," he asked gruffly.

"Sure," Aiynuur said, reaching into her pocket and handing her new ID badge to the boy. He scrutinized it and her for a long moment, before doing a quick 360 scan of the area. He gravely beckoned them towards the door.

"You're lucky," the boy said a white smile flashing across his face as he opened the service door. "No one is at their post right now - everyone is up watching the Kazekage observe the exercises."

"How is he?" whispered Misako as they entered a wide cool hall beneath the stadium.

"I haven't seen him yet," Tobi responded. "But my cousin saw him yesterday in his office and said he looked totally fine."

Listening quietly, Aiynuur wanted to ask them for more information about Gaara. But her presence here was tentative enough as it was, she realized, as Tobi kept looking back at her to make sure that she was not about to wander off into what was perhaps restricted territory down here in the bowels of the coliseum.

Tobi brought them down a wide dark corridor and around a corner that terminated in a pair of doors. As they approached them, the volume level began to increase and so did the "bugs under the skin" feeling of the chakra. Through the double doors, they climbed a stairwell that was open at the top. Aiynuur tried her best to focus on the feeling of the handrail as she ascended into the press of human energy.

They reached the top and from that vantage, which Aiynuur realized must be a an emergency exit, the landing they stood on was just a few feet above the sandy floor of the stadium. The space that in front of them was expansive. The seats of the stadium were thronged with men and women who were talking, laughing and cheering as groups of fighters sparred in the ring. The field itself was easily large enough to accommodate the maneuvers of the 100 or so Shinobi sparring on the field.

Aiynuur felt him before she could see him. She reached out with her chakra sense as she looked up at the far end of the arena to a raised platform. She could not make out his features, but his identity was clear thanks to his familiar vermilion energy, unmistakable in her inner landscape.

Gaara's figure, robed in black, stood flanked on both sides by several other senior looking shinobi.

Did he know she was here? Aiynuur tugged at the edges of her guard and pulled them in more tightly against the waxing flow of all around her, thrusting her own chakra into the narrow expanse of her body. Tobi looked back at her quizzically, and she wondered if he had some sensitivity as she did. Aiynuur smiled back at him. He considered her for a moment before turning and pointing for her benefit to the platform.

"He's up there on the dais - the one in black," Tobi said.

As Aiynuur watched Gaara's figure from afar, a chant began among the spectators. It began as a murmur in the highest corners of the stadium and then swept over the crowd, building in intensity. The exact words were lost on her in the great cacophony of sound, but the aim of it seemed clear. It was a request directed at the Kazekage.

After about a minute of the building tumult of the chant, Gaara raised the white expanse of his arm into the air in a silent request to quiet the crowd. Below in the arena the sparring stopped, and each Shinobi turned and stood, gathering to face the Kage in a rectangular formation. A hush broke over the crowd as Gaara continued to hold up his hand. Finally, he lowered, and as he did so a cheer broke out among the spectators. Whatever the chanter's request had been, it seemed as if the Kazekage would grant it.

"Do you think that he...?" Misako asked Tobi.

"Yes!" Tobi smiled and said in an expectant whisper.

Curious, Aiynuur leaned over the edge of the metal railing in front of her and strained her gaze to watch the now lone black figure standing near the edge of the platform. She could feel Gaara gathering his energy and she shivered as she felt her own chi shift in response. Ai breathed deeply, trying to still that echo inside of her. Whether they were conscious of it or not, Ai was aware that the chakra of the spectators around her seemed shifted and grew as well, in empathy as the man they all watched gathered his own.

Aiynuur felt that prickle of sweat bloom over her again as she felt Gaara's chakra build - its character had not changed since she was last in close contact with it just two short days ago, but somehow its depth had. That mysterious word stole over her thoughts again, Jinchuuriki. She watched as his arms moved, forming a series of gestures. The onlookers quieted again, and Aiynuur watched as his energy coalesced out of the sandy floor around the squadron that stood below them on the field of the stadium.

Misako and Tobi laughed in delight as a humanoid form sprung up near each of the squadron of 100 men and women assembled below. The outlines of the shapes defined, hardened and took on color as they all watched. Sand clones - Ai realized. Incredibly, Gaara had reached into himself and created five scores of them - one for every soldier that stood on the field. The crowd roared in appreciation.

Unlike him, the sand clones each wore a white gi with a wide black belt tied a the waist, each of them had its own copy of his characteristic gourd-like vessel at its hip. The shinobi and the clones all bowed to one another other, ready for the mock battle to commence.

From the plinth, Gaara raised his hand again and gave a signal. The battle royale began. Aiynuur watched dumbfounded as the shinobi and the clones fought. It wasn't just the astounding amount of energy that it took to orchestrate all these burning echoes of himself, it was the coordination. Each one held some sort of stamp - some imprint of Gaara so strongly that they seemed to be, as the individual clones Ai had encountered, able to act all on their own.

Totally captivated by the scene before her, Aiynuur let the white-knuckled hold she had on her energy slip. Hypnotized by the flow in front of she felt herself reach out, a gossamer current that hung suspended around the action that was happening below. It was amazing to watch and feel - the things that Gaara and all of the assembled people below could do with their energy as they bobbed and feinted, split and parried. The control and the skill hypnotized her.

Aiynuur was so focused on the action that she did not notice him until his shadow fell across her. Ai looked up and back to the source of the shadow. Behind her, observing the melee below, standing balanced on the ledge just above the stairwell was what looked like one of Gaara's clones. At least, it was a figure clad in what appeared to be the same white uniform and black obi as the clones. Sensitive as her senses were though Ai smiled, it was him.

He did not look down at her, but instead stood in that intensely still way he had, his arms crossed in front of him, gazing out at the fray below. She could have been imagining it, but Ai wondered if she saw the trace of a smile play across his lips. She looked back at the dais at the end of the field and saw the black-robed figure of the clone that Gaara had switched places with standing exactly where he had been just moments before.

Ai knew what was expected of her, and so she did not turn to greet him. Instead, she continued to watch the fight below and said as loud as she dared with Tobi and Misako near two short words, "Show off."

If the wind carried her words to him, she wasn't sure, but in that moment Tobi and Misako caught sight of the "clone" and stood agape as it dissolved on the wind above them. Although Gaara was gone in an instant, Aiynuur knew the glow of that moment would last. It had been as good as a hello. Aiynuur hoped that Misako and Tobi wouldn't get into trouble.

"Oh man, that was too close for comfort," Tobi said, smiling sheepishly at Misako and Ai. "Let's go back."


	16. Chapter 16

Aiynuur collapsed into bed, her bed. She stared up at the ceiling - her ceiling, and smiled. She had a place of her own, at least for now. It was an efficiency, only large enough to fit a twin bed, a table and chair, and a narrow counter that had a cozy cupboard and small cooktop. But it was hers.

She lay there and listened to the sound of people on the busy street five floors below her open window, and an unexpected wave of emotion broke over her. For the first time in a long time, Aiynuur let herself cry, as she lay there, listening to the street, daring to believe that she might belong in the world.

It was...so hard to believe. Maybe tomorrow it would all be gone. Was that terrible thought comforting? She didn't know. But she suspected this place, simple as it was, would only become more dear to her, and that would make whatever happened to disrupt it all the more painful when it did. After her tears ran dry she got up and washed off her face with cold water, noting a faded sign adorned with cartoon cacti that encouraged visitors to conserve water.

A buzzing sound interrupted her thoughts as she clumsily wiped her wet face on one of her older shirts - she would have to buy a towel. The buzzing sound persisted as she looked around for wherever it might be emanating from. Finally she saw a white plastic grill with a yellow button next to the door. She pushed the yellow button and the buzzing terminated. Aiynuur nearly jumped out of her skin when a few minutes later she heard a knocking at her door.

She reached out with her senses and felt the chakra of two unfamiliar people. Aiynuur opened the door and two men in green uniforms and hats stood on the other side, each them was holding a large box. The shorter man nodded his head in greeting and asked, "Miss Ai, unit 526?"

"Uh, yeah," she replied.

"Where would you like these packages?"

"Oh, um, please put them on the table, I guess..." she responded.

The two men nodded and wiped their feet carefully before entering and putting the two boxes on her small table. She thanked them and they left. Aiynuur eyed the two boxes. Were they from him? They must be, right? She found a butter knife and used its edge to cut the tape of the first container. In it she found some basic household things - a towel, tooth brush, toothpaste, soap - a battery powered alarm clock. Someone had sent her a care package.

She cut open the other and found a note at the top, but to her surprise she realized it was from Kankuro. It read,

 _"G asked me to put this stuff together for you. Welcome to your new place! The non-com visitors' Annex is cramped, but it beats the barracks, I should know. Enclosed there are two letters - one will give you_ authorization _to use the library. The other is your letter of introduction to Naga-sensei, the head of Greenhouse 2, one of the medical botanicals ones where you're assigned to help out._

 _Don't sweat your backstory too much. Just keep your head down and you'll do great. You may be lonely here before you get to know people. Sorry about that - he might not say it, but I know he is too. If you decide you'd like some company, try Greenhouse 7 around 9 pm. You'll find a friend there most nights. Thanks for taking a chance on us, Ai-san. - K"_

 _Greenhouse 7?_ She looked at the battery operated clock. It read 3:15 pm. The second box contained some basic pantry items like rice, bread and some canned things. Ai realized with dismay that she had no idea how to even cook rice, and then wondered if she ever had. Somehow she guessed she hadn't been the kind of person who cooked. She opened the bread bag and ate an unadorned slice, thinking of that amazing melon bread Misako had introduced her to and wondering if a woman could survive on fresh fruit and melon bread alone.

Aiynuur found the two envelopes. She fingered the one for the library and thought about all the things that she had discovered already today that she wanted to know more about. She smiled and looked at the burgundy dress, the one that she'd been gifted, where it hung in her open wardrobe.

Aiynuur changed out of her clothes and put it on, pulling out of one of the paper bags from her trip to the market with Misako a pair of round blue glasses and a burgundy veil that matched the fabric of the dress. She put on the glasses and then the veil, and looked at her obscured face in the mirror of her bathroom.

Unlike the other outfit they'd given her, Ai didn't look much like a shinobi in this one - but then again, she wasn't one, nor was the character she was playing. Ai grabbed her things and the letter for the library, tucking them all in the voluminous sleeve of her dress. Sure she felt tired, but there was no way she was going to be caught for long in doors when there was a new place for her explore - a place filled with quiet, non-judgmental, mercifully chakra-less books. Books that held answers.

Gaara smiled when he found her in the library that night around 11 pm - Aiynuur was slumped gracelessly over a pile of books sound asleep. For those that were authorized to use it, like Aiynuur was now, the reference library was open 24 hours a day, and it wasn't uncommon for a medical student cramming for a test to be in the position that Ai was in right now. Although admittedly Aiynuur didn't look much like a student.

She was wearing the conservative but well cut maroon dress that Temari had unwittingly purchased for her. In the private study room Aiynuur had holed up in she had removed the veil she had come in with and wrapped it around her shoulders, revealing a mass of dark hair, and her perfect face.

Gaara had puttered around the Greenhouse for awhile that evening, catching up with old potted friends there and hoping that she might appear. He knew that Kankuro had left her a note to the affect that he could be found there if she wanted to connect. When she didn't arrive he was disappointed but didn't think too much of it, but checked in with the Lookout team to see if she'd been seen entering the Annex that evening. After being informed that she didn't appear to be there either and growing a bit alarmed, he asked himself where else she would be, and the answer was obvious.

Gaara thought about waking her, as he wanted to let her know about developments with Kabuto in his search for her past. He was about to when his eye alighted on the spine of the book she had apparently just been reading. The Jinchuuriki - Truth and Mythology. His breath caught in him. Gaara frowned. _How quick she was, not a day out and already she was unraveling him._ But why should it bother him that she should know? Gently he picked up the book. It seemed older. He flipped through and looked at the title page noting where it was published and the year, thankfully before his birth.

As Aiynuur appeared to be well asleep yet, he risked a peek at the index and opened to the first page about the Shukaku. The chapter was entitled, "A Tempest in a Teapot". Gaara grimaced at the pun and scanned the first few lines. Published in Konoha originally, there were quite a few things the author had gotten wrong.

Inwardly, Gaara sighed and put the book down where she had left it. It couldn't be helped - being a part of his world meant knowing certain things about him and he had to accept that. Of course, she would be curious about him. Somehow he found it difficult to imagine telling her about the brutality of his past all the same. It would all have to wait until another day.

Gaara let himself be seen on the way out, which was a big shock for the night clerk, who nearly jumped out of his skin as Gaara approached.

"Kazekage-sama!" the young man leaped to his feet in a salute.

"At ease. I'd like to check this out, please," Gaara said, handing him a book he'd pick at random from the stacks.

"Sure, of course! May I say it's good to see you, Sir," the man said, smiling nervously as he took out the paper tag from the book and marked it with a shaking hand.

"Also, there's someone who's asleep in study room 17. Would you mind waking them? I suspect they'd thank you for it," Gaara said quietly as he accepted the book back - something about sea urchins, he noted with amusement.

The man nodded furiously and gave him another salute as he left.

* * *

It was around 8 pm, earlier than he usually was able to get down to the Greenhouses, but Gaara needed a break. Being back and working without Temari's assistance was draining. He decided to spend a little time relaxing before working into the night. As he walked from the Kage's Tower to the Greenhouses, the path led him through Memorial Park. At first, he didn't recognize her, clothed in one of her new uniforms. It was the tickle of her familiar energy that made him look twice in her direction.

Aiynuur sat on a bench facing one of the memorial tablets that stretched from one end of the small plaza to the other. She was eating something, and frowning as she chewed. Gaara did a quick scan for any onlookers, and found none. The Memorial Park was just that - a somber place for remembering the lost. People passed right through if at all, and stayed only when they wanted to sit with their own ghosts for a time.

She was so lost in thought that Aiynuur didn't notice him until he materialized beside her. Wide-eyed in surprise, she stared at him through the blue colored lenses of the new glasses she wore to conceal her eye color. She greeted him with a smile.

"I'm going to put a bell on you, if you're going to keep sneaking up on me," Aiynuur threatened playfully, her voice just above a whisper. "Can I pretend to know you for a few minutes?" she asked, scooting over on the stone bench so he could sit down next to her.

"Just for a minute," he said, smirking. He accepted her silent offer to sit down, aware that his shoulder was up against hers.

"Wow, it's like we're spies," Aiynuur remarked conspiratorially, admiring the way his shoulders looked in the double-breasted deep red jacket he wore. "Although, I guess a ninja is sort of like a spy already," she said, offhandedly, taking another bite of what Gaara realized was melon bread. "Would you like some?" Aiynuur asked, noting his gaze. Gaara shook his head. So she had a sweet tooth?

"What are you doing here?" he asked. Hoping that she might admit she had been waiting for 9 o'clock to roll around so she could visit him.

"Well, cheating on the headware restriction, so that I can have dinner," Aiynuur replied, referring to her pulled-down mask that was supposed to cover the lower half of her face.

"Melon bread?" Gaara asked, a little incredulous. "Is that all you're having?"

Aiynuur laughed softly. "Mmm...my host forgot to include a personal chef as a part of my hotel package. I'll live though."

"Do you...like it?" Gaara asked. "I mean, are you comfortable in your new place?"

"It's wonderful, thank you!" she relied, a smile, strangely tinged with sadness appearing on her face. "Although Naga-sensei, my supervisor at the Greenhouse is an interesting one. I don't know that she'll ever trust me with anything more than turning the compost. And me with my phony credentials as a botanist from the Flower Nation of all places," Aiynuur chided.

"Ah, Naga-sensei," Gaara thought of the old veteran, her tongue sharpened on generations of young Suna acolytes. "She's severe, that's true," he admitted. "She's a 'trust is earned' kind of character. But once you earn it, she has decades of wisdom to share."

"Decades? That seems about right. She seems like someone who's grown old to spite the world. Not that I don't respect that," Aiynuur remarked. "Well, I'm just here to keep my head down. I don't have to be friends, so that's alright," she shrugged, that far-off look he'd seen before returned to her face as she gazed at the tablet in front of them.

Gaara looked at it as well. It was a stone tablet carved out of native red granite quarried a few miles away. It bore names in neat lines, dozens upon dozens of them. Five generations of Sunagakure martyrs and heroes were inscribed there.

"Missing in Action," Aiynuur said, reading the title of this particular tablet. "Do you think my name, my real name - is on a tablet somewhere like this?" she asked, glancing at him, a sad expression in her eyes. "I said I was having my dinner," Aiynuur continued. "But to tell you the truth, Gaara, you just interrupted my pity party for one," she chuckled.

"It's so strange to think about it - I had a whole life out there, somewhere, probably. I mean in my 20's probably, I guess I wasn't grown in a test tube. When I was under their microscope at the Farm, I never got to think all that much about it. I was too busy just trying to survive, to find a way out."

Gaara breathed deeply. It was good to hear her use his name so naturally, but the words she said made him ache. Here was a woman whose suffering ran deep, although she tried to speak lightly of it. How could he even begin to offer her any semblance of empathy? Everything he thought to say seemed wholly inadequate, and so he sat there, in sympathetic silence instead for a beat.

"Your life before," Gaara began, wondering how this would sit with her. "I have some news to share with you about it, if you'd like to hear it right now."

Aiynuur looked over at him, her eyes wide behind her glasses. Sensing she was too stunned to speak, Gaara decided to continue.

"I don't know much yet, but shortly before I the incident I asked a friend in Konoha to launch an investigation into your past."

"OK," she swallowed, finally finding the strength to speak "...and?"

"The agent has been out for the past five weeks following leads. He checked in a week ago. He has a lead - a man, specifically, who may know details about your past," Gaara let the words sink in for a moment.

Aiynuur swept her hand over her face and took a deep breath.

"So you think he knows who I am? Or who I was, at least?" she asked

"Yes, apparently the man who may have this information about you is in an undisclosed location that's quite difficult to get into, but the agent working on this case is figuring out a way to get to him. I have full confidence in this agent - his capabilities are formidable, and he's uniquely qualified to work on this case," he explained.

They fell back to silence again as he let her think through the implications of this new disclosure.

"Gaara-sama...there's something that I want to ask you. It's sort of a personal question I guess. It's about the Jinchuuriki," Aiynuur said.

Gaara's breath stilled in his chest. Here it came - that moment he knew he must explain, since finding her in the library the night before. How would she feel, knowing that some of the names of the fallen on the tablets in front of them had fallen to his own hands as a boy during his father Rasa's many ill-fated assassination attempts? Would she look at him the same way once she knew? Would she want him by her side?

"I understand a little bit about what they are..." she said. "I even understand that you used to be one, too, which I have to admit I'm curious about, of course. That's why I suspect you're the best person for this question. It feels so strange to ask, but...is that what I am, a Jinchuuriki? Is that why I can do the things I can do?" Aiynuur asked - her soft eyes alighting on his face, no hint of judgment or fear in them.

Gaara found his lips parted in surprise. To think that she could be a Jinchuuriki, she wasn't a fool. What was the depth of her power? Had they truly seen only a fraction? What secrets did she still hold from him in that small frame? He shut his mouth again and shook his head.

"No, if it's any comfort to you, no," Gaara explained. "All the Jinchuuriki are dead or freed - save one," he explained. "And that one is not you."

"Huh," Ai said, her expression quizzical, even disappointed. She sighed in exasperation. "Then what the hell am I, anyway?" she asked, shaking her head.

Gaara smiled in sympathy, and stood, the golden-hour light of the Suna's setting sun making his hair glow like a halo.

"I know what you are," he said.

"What?" Aiynuur asked, her strange red-brown eyes as sincere as a flower.

"A friend," Gaara replied, extending his had to her. "A friend who's going to have more than melon bread for dinner."

"Oh," Aiynuur smiled, a bit embarrassed. Aiynuur took his hand, letting him pull her to her feet.

"I have a place we can go," Gaara said. "But we'll have to travel my way. And you'll have to order for us," Gaara explained, watching her face carefully to see how those ideas sat with her.

Traveling 'his way' sounded intriguing, especially if it involved the prospect of him carrying her over a few rooftops, Aiynuur thought to herself hopefully. "Sure, and as to ordering, that sounds fine if you'll explain exactly what I should do. I'll try to do it. But I have to warn you, I'm not at all used to this being human thing," she said.

Gaara smiled, and shared truthfully. "Neither am I."

Aiynuur stood next to Gaara on the rooftop of the Kage's tower, the highest point in the city. She hadn't let go of his arm yet and Gaara hadn't pulled away from her. Traveling his way, had meant using his hidden sand cloud technique to move them unseen through the city. He could make a cloud big enough to accommodate a small army.

But why do that when a much smaller one was an excuse for to hook arms with Ai as they traveled undetected above the town? They now stood together in silence, their dinner tucked away in a take-out bag that Ai held, as the last rays of violet dusk played against the stark edge of the man-made valley that Suna sat within. A sliver of a moon was rising overhead.

"Wow," she said. "Isn't it funny how words can totally fail you when you see something so beautiful?"

Gaara turned his head to look down at her, her face glowing in the evening light.

"Yes," Gaara said. "I think I understand what you mean."

Aiynuur looked up at him and smiled, his meaning completely lost on her. The wind picked up and, close as she was, the loose tendrils of her black hair played across his back. He could feel the goose flesh raise on the back of his neck. Was he prepared to even acknowledge how he ached for her? Did she comprehend how he felt at all? Gaara looked back at her again.

"Should we have some of these then? I'm dying to try it," Aiynuur said.

They sat down on the rooftop, its stucco surface still warm from the sun. Ai opened the bag from the take-away shop they'd stopped by. Gaara explained on the flight over that he was taking her to one of his favorite spots for a bite to eat in town. Unfortunately he couldn't be seen with her. A beautiful foreigner arm-in-arm with the Kage would invite too much attention. She'd laughed skeptically at his "beautiful" comment but as always understood his reasoning for staying concealed and didn't seem upset by it.

Aiynuur took the first curry bread out of the bag and handed it to Gaara, and then grabbed her own. He watched as she took a bite, and began to cough. Alarmed he patted her on her back until the fit subsided.

"Don't like the curry?" he asked.

Ai shook her head. "No, it's good - it just surprised me. I don't think I've had something like it before. You know what though," Ai said, smirking at him. "This is really just a savory version of melon bread, if you ask me."

Gaara chuckled. "That may be so, but at least there's more than one food group in there."

"OK," Ai shrugged. "You win that one."

Ai asked Gaara about how he was feeling, and they chatted a bit about his health, and the difficulty of catching up on work. Finally they lapsed into a comfortable silence until Ai turned back to him.

"Gaara-sama?" Ai asked.

"Gaara, Ai, please just call me that," he asked.

"Yes," she said, smiling shyly. "Gaara - when you, asked me to stay here with you, you said that there were many people who I could help just as I had helped you. I know there are many who are injured at the hospital, and still others who have permanent injuries, do you think it's possible that I could be allowed to help them?"

Gaara sighed and shook his head.

"I know what I said, and I know you could help them. Unfortunately, at the moment we still need to conceal your identity, and that means concealing your abilities."

"Yes, I guess," Aiynuur frowned. "Well, if staying hidden is the only thing that's holding me back from really using my skills. Would it be alright to use my skills in secret?"

"What do you have in mind?" Gaara asked coolly, a little concerned about what she could be cooking up in her head, but glad that she trusted him enough to share whatever idea she had with him first before trying it.

"Well, there's this plant - the Century Plant. I know that you only have two in your greenhouses, and that they're not set to bloom for another 30 years or so. There's a medicine that Naga-sensei was talking about that's badly needed, but it can't be restocked until your plants bloom, or until someone finds one blooming in the wild. I was thinking...What if I made it bloom without anyone knowing it was me that triggered it?"

Gaara thought for a moment. He knew of the plant, and that supplies of its life-giving drug were dwindling.

"What do you propose?" Gaara asked.

"Well, how would you like to smuggle me into your own greenhouse at night?" Ai asked, her eyes sparkling with mischief.

A smile tugged at the corner of his lips.

"Yes," Gaara said. "That sounds like an interesting idea."

* * *

Aiynuur and Gaara agreed that he would figure out the best timing for their clandestine night mission and then seek her out. It was not unusual for him to spend time at the greenhouses to relax late at night. There was a patrol that swept the grounds of course, as well as various alarms and locks that were set to protect Suna's most precious and expensive medicinal plants. He would scope them out and then connect with her.

It was four nights later when Aiynuur was awoken from a dead sleep. Knowing that Gaara could drop by to pick her up for their mission any night, she had gone to bed the first three nights fully clothed and ready to go. Exhausted from that day's long work though, she had collapsed that night on her stomach in a figure four fashion. Hot when she'd gone to bed, she'd stripped down to her a bra without thinking about it but left her pants and socks on.

"Ai," his soft dark voice filled her mind.

"Mmmfff," was Ai's initial response, before the icy ichor of adrenaline lit her spine, causing her to sit bolt upright in bed. Gaara. Aiynuur cast about her still dark room, the windows and doors were exactly as she'd left him. The red digits of her digital clock glowed, 2:37 am.

"Uh, Gaara?" Aiynuur asked the darkness, as she ran her fingers through her snarled bed head hair in a desperate attempt to smooth it down. Her chakra sense was filled with his energy, flooded in fact, but his exact point was unidentifiable. Where was he? Was he actually trying to "jam" her senses with his energy, or was he just right on top of her somehow and she couldn't see him?

Ai stood and went over to her partially opened window and lifted up the bottom sash. Screenless, as there were no insects in Suna to keep out, Ai stuck her head through the opening and peered down to the street below. There was no one around. Confused, she began to retreat from the window.

"Aiynuur," Gaara said, the source of his voice was clearly behind her this time.

Surprised, Aiynuur whacked her head hard on the bottom of the sash and stumbled back into the room straight into what turned out to be Gaara's back, which he'd turned to her out of politeness after seeing her bare skin. Gaara, apparently not expecting she would shove gracelessly right into him, tried to catch Ai's falling body even as he tumbled over himself.

They lay in a breathless jumble on the floor for a few seconds, Ai vividly aware of her exposed body. She was glad that it was dark enough that he couldn't see the ugly scars that marred her chest. Ai used one arm to cover her chest and looked up at the dim outline of his face as he held himself above her. She noticed that his eyes were shut, even in the darkness. Ai smiled. Hesitantly she reached out and cupped his face. It felt warm and soft, dusty like chalk somehow, but it didn't come off on her hand. Her fingers trailed boldly down to the hollow at his throat.

"I was serious, Gaara," Ai whispered. "I'm going to get you that bell. A big silver one. And you can wear it on a big black collar right..."

Ai's words were cut short. Gaara had grabbed the fingers of the hand that touched his throat and held them tightly but not painfully. He was completely still, his intense way. But whereas it usually was a comfort to her, right now it had taken on a different quality, a new one. In her mind, she could feel a sensation, like a shudder run through his energy. If it were a noise, it would be the moan of a timber that was about to crack. She had touched him. Had she offended him? After all, she had stupidly knocked him over.

"I'm sorry..." Ai began to apologize.

"No," Gaara responded. "I am."

With that admission, he opened his eyes. They glittered in the dark, filled with a focus so intense that Ai felt instantly transfixed. His energy was poised above her, an arrow directed at her core. An unnamed frisson spread from her navel right up to the base of her neck. The next thing she knew, they were both standing upright, his arms clasped around her and his mouth against her lips.

Surprised at first Ai quickly relaxed into his caress and opened up to him, wrapping her own arms around his shoulders to return the embrace. Feeling that opening in her energy he drank her in more deeply. The soft swell of her breasts pressed tightly against him, inspiring the mounting constriction at his base. Feeling that edge, Ai lifted her arms further, hooking them around his neck, using that contact as leverage as she pressed her body against it and him.

Gaara broke the kiss as a throaty noise escaped him. Ai felt his hot breath on her wet kiss-bruised lips. He leaned in and rested his forehead against hers, as he held her, wrapping his arms more tightly around her. His fingertips accidentally grazed over the puckered edge of an old scar on her side above her hip. His hand seemed to become hung up there, stuck on that jagged evidence of her old pain. To her disappointment, his caresses stopped. _Were her scars so ugly? Were they such a distraction to him?_

She felt him master his labored breath for a moment. Then he pulled away from her, his gaze cast downward. Gaara leaned in and kissed her softly on her forehead. And with that, he disappeared. Ai blinked, stunned by the sudden void of his absence. She cast about for him physically and then closed her eyes, in her chakrascape she felt him retreating like a westward moving storm in the direction of the Kage's tower.

Her heart still thundering in her chest, Aiynuur stood bereft, hurt, confused. What just happened? Why had Gaara left when she so clearly wanted him? In her mind she cast about for a reason and remembered the feeling of his fingers against the numb edge of that scar on her side. Surely that must be it. She disgusted him - and he didn't even know a fraction of her horrors. Heartbroken and suddenly unutterably tired, Ai sat down on her bed and began to cry.


	17. Chapter 17

It was night at Hozuki Castle - the Grass Nation's Blood Prison. The island that held the sprawling compound that was the Grass' most formidable fortress had been difficult to infiltrate - surrounded as it was by deadly currents. To get passage to the island, Kabuto used his mimicry skills to take the place of a disgruntled pantry boy who he bribed into taking up a new career.

Now he stood and stared at the thin, moonlit wreck of a man - Zettai Rei, the man who Kabuto had come to see. According to the intel he gathered, Zettai was the man who master-minded the experiments on the woman whose history and identity he'd been sent to uncover. As it happened, Kabuto had long known the man by his reputation.

Zettai Rei was a brilliant scientist, and he and Kabuto once held similar interests. Both men quested at one point in their lives to create the perfect life-form. Kabuto had sought to perfect his own body. Zettai, on the other hand, was a religious fanatic. He had sought something different. He had sought the manifestation of what he called his "Goddess".

Zettai belonged to a religious sect called the Aokigahara, the Sea of Trees. The Aokigahara worshiped an immortal being that had been, according to legend, discovered three thousand years ago in one of the Grass' ancient forests. Strangely enough, this immortal Goddess was said to be a tree or to have taken the form of a tree somehow.

Legend had it that, once awakened again, the Goddess would cleanse the world of the rot of humanity - standard radical religious nonsense. In Kabuto's opinion, it was all a bunch of myth cooked up by disenfranchised and desperate people. And the tree itself, which outsiders had confirmed did exist, was likely simply a remarkably long-lived and lucky plant.

And yet the photo that Kabuto concealed in his breast pocket of the mystery woman, and the story that the Hokage had told him about the explosive incident in the Kazekage's office had suggested, amazingly, something different. Had Zettai truly awakened his Goddess after all? It was time to find out. That was if the husk of the man in front of him could speak at all.

Kabuto let himself resolve into view. Zettai opened his eyes and smiled at him, completely unsurprised by his presence. Perhaps Zettai was so far gone that he was used to people appearing suddenly out of thin air.

"I know you," Zettai said. "You're Kabuto-sensei. You're a seeker. A seeker of the ultimate form, like me," he said, his gaunt body not stirring from where he leaned against the dirty stone wall of his prison cell.

Kabuto nodded, a bit surprised that the man seemed as cognizant as he did. He opted to humor the man and see how far it got him.

"You are here to see me," Zettai continued. "That makes me think that you must have realized how wrong you were to seek perfection inside yourself. You follow the Goddess?"

Kabuto nodded.

"So, she is here with you? Is it time for the cleansing?" Zettai asked.

"No," Kabuto said, weighing what to say to the man next to get the information he needed from him, and quickly. "But I have been sent here to help her." That was not technically even a lie.

Zettai nodded. "I understand - she must want information from me then."

"Yes, please, let's start with her name," Kabuto asked.

"But surely you know already?" Zettai asked. "She is the Araki, the Wild Tree."

Kabuto frowned. Clearly, the man's delusion ran deep.

"Yes, but what of her name before - who was she before she became...the Goddess?" Kabuto asked.

The man shook his greasy head.

"No, no - she still doesn't understand. Why does she wonder about these unimportant things?" Zettai mumbled. "I must tell her. I must remind her..."

"Yes," Kabuto said, redirecting the man's straying train of thought. "She must be reminded. But you must stay here, or they will get suspicious that you've gone to join her, and the time is not yet right for...the cleansing. But I can tell her, Zettai-sensei. Please, what things do you have to share with me that I can use to remind Araki-sama of who she is?"

The hollow-eyed man grinned. The peeks of his cheekbones sharp against his gaunt skin. It was lucky Kabuto had found him now, it was hard to say how long the clearly tortured and half-starved man would stay alive in this condition. He must have truly angered the Grass Daimyo or one of the elites to end up this way, and it seemed letting this woman escape was likely the crime.

"I have something to share," Zettai responded. "A key."

"Where is it?" Kabuto asked, looking at the man skeptically. It was unlikely that the guards of the Blood Prison had let Zettai keep or hide anything when he entered the keep.

"Ah," Zettai said, tapping his head. "Not that kind of key, Kabuto-sensei. A key that's in the mind."

* * *

The sound of the man's strained cry filled Shiro's ears. It brought a thrush of warmth to his body, a sense of satisfaction, of relief. His guard captain had let him down - again. Shiro, the fourth son of the Grass Daimyo, stood over the man as he lay on the wood floor beneath him. He drove the sheathed wooden tip of his katana into the man's shoulder. Uni should be grateful, what he was doing to him wouldn't even leave a mark. It was, of course, still quite painful.

"Which files, Uni? Which files we're copied - you can at least tell me that can't you?"

"Ye-yes," the man stammered. "They were the Project May Queen files."

"The May Queen! How? Those files were encrypted - even our best techs couldn't unlock that drive. Do you mean to tell me that this person did what we could not, and then ran off with a copy of the damn data?"

The man nodded as Shiro leaned into the edge, shoving it more deeply into the trigger point for pain in the man's shoulder. "And did he leave it unencrypted, Uni?"

"No - but wait!" Uni mewled as Shiro began to unsheathe his sword. "There's good news - I installed a keylogger on all of our system's terminals."

"A keylogger - does that mean what I think it means?" Shiro asked.

"Yes, Sir. The keylogger notes all of the keystrokes made at one of the terminals. Everything the man who broke in typed into the terminal to unencrypt the data is there now in the records, Sir."

"Uni, why didn't you start there?" Shiro asked, smiling benevolently down at the man lying prostrate on the floor, wet with the sweat of fear.

"You said you wanted the bad news first, Sir," Uni's voiced quavered.

Shiro stepped away from the man, letting him get back into the kneeling position he let Uni assume in audience with him. Shiro looked out of the window into the carefully manicured garden beyond. He had gotten word early that morning that there had been a break-in at his compound's data center the previous night. So, The May Queen files were missing - and they were stolen by someone who apparently knew the key. _What did it mean?_

First of all, it meant that Zettai's notes were potentially just as important as Shiro suspected they were. But who had extracted the data? Someone who had spoken to Zettai to get the key apparently, but who hadn't broken Zettai out. There had been no report of him escaping. That suggested someone who wanted to know about the May Queen, but someone who wasn't affiliated with the Aokigahara and therefore interested in aiding Zettai's escape.

It also suggested that the Subject was still alive. For if she were dead, as Zettai claimed even under torture, and the actor who had contacted him at the Blood Prison was not Zettai's compatriot, then the only reason anyone would know of her existence was if they had met her firsthand. So, it suggested the Subject was still alive. And that she had been recovered by someone else. There was now a third party in play.

That was a dangerous possibility. For whoever had recovered her, if they didn't know already, would soon understand more than Shiro, at the moment, understood about Project May Queen - the project he had secretly funded with money stolen from his father's own pocket. Shiro had trusted that Zettai would deliver on his promise to create the perfect biological weapon, the unstoppable assassin. The video reports he had seen of the Subject had been promising, but merely only suggestive of what she could do once she was "awakened", as Zettai had called it.

Shiro needed to get ahead of this. He needed to know what Zettai had discovered before most of his lab was so thoroughly destroyed in the incident that had resulted in the mysterious deaths of all of his junior scientists. Shiro needed to look at the unencrypted notes and video. And then - if the Subject was still alive - he needed to recover her himself, or to at least neutralize her and the threat of what she knew and was, at any cost, before she implicated him.

"Uni - you can make this up to me, but you're going to have to give it your all. Do you understand?" Shiro asked.

"Yes, Sir," was Uni's hurried response.

"Good - first continue the search for the man who broke in here. Contact the Administrator of the Hozuki and tell her that she's had a break in. She's responsible for explaining to me how it happened and turning over any evidence she has of the intruder. Then I need to you to use that keylogger to finally unencrypt Zettai's fucking files."

"After you've done that and given the data to me, I need you and your intel team to scan all the news reports and the rumor feeds from all the areas surrounding Zettai's lab over the past few months. I want you to look for any mention of a woman with memory loss, or a woman who can manipulate plant or animal life, or heal herself. If she's alive there should at least be some scrap of rumor about her somewhere. You have 24 hours to get me a viable lead."

Shiro watched as the man nodded his head rapidly.

"Now go and get me results. Next time, Uni, this sword will be unsheathed."

* * *

"She what?" Gaara demanded.

Sari was surprised by the vehemence in his tone. She had always admired the Kazekage for his level-headed nature, but this time he seemed unable to conceal his disquiet about the news she had just shared with him. She had expected polite interest. Sari was now regretting having shared this little morsel of fresh village gossip with him.

"The Century Plant," Sari continued, standing in a deferential stance, staring straight ahead of her. Gaara stood up abruptly from his seat at his desk and turned to the window. Kankuro, the only other occupant of the room, stayed seated, watching his brother's rigid body carefully.

"The Century Plant, Kazekage-sama," Sari explained. "There's a registered foreigner working in the greenhouses that made the Century Plants bloom - both of them. She was caught doing the first one, and then Naga-sensei asked her to try and make the other one bloom as well. I'm sure Naga-sensei will report this back to you, but it's remarkable. I thought you would want to know."

"Thank you for bringing this matter to me, Sari-san. I know of this foreigner. Please contact the woman known as Ai of the Flower Country and have her escorted here to me immediately. She should still be in Greenhouse 2 at this time."

Sari bowed and left the Kazekage's office as quickly as politeness would allow her to.

"Wow," Kankuro remarked. "I thought you told Ai to keep a low profile?"

"Of course I did," Gaara replied. He ran a hand anxiously through his carefully styled hair, messing it up in the process and making him look much more like the boy that Kankuro knew when his brother first took office.

"How have things been going between you two since I've been out on assignment?" Kankuro asked, noting his brother's obvious agitation.

Gaara continued to stare moodily out of the window at the street far below.

"How have things been going?" Gaara repeated. "They haven't. I haven't spoken to her in two weeks."

"Huh, OK...So how did you fuck things up then?" Kankuro asked.

"How did _I_ fuck things up?" Gaara responded testily.

Just then the sound of the buzzer on Gaara's desk split the tense atmosphere. Gaara leaned over the desk and punched the button.

"Yes?" he asked tersely. "What is it?"

The dulcet tone of Sari's 'I'm trying to placate the Boss' voice oozed through the speaker.

"So sorry to interrupt Kazekage-sama, but the woman Ai from the Flower Country is here in the waiting room.

"Already?" Gaara asked, racking his hand through his thick red hair once again.

"Yes, Sir. It seems she came to speak to you about the incident herself," Sari explained.

"Fine then, let her in," Gaara replied. He stood for a moment rapt in thought, and then quickly sat down as Sari began to open the sliding door to admit Aiynuur's petite form. Kankuro couldn't help but smirk as he watched Gaara smooth down his hair, and awkwardly affect a look of relaxed confidence as the pretty black haired woman entered the room.

Aiynuur stopped just within the door and nodded to Sari, who looked at the bespectacled and masked woman suspiciously before bowing to the Kazekage and closing the door. Once the door was shut Aiynuur stepped forward into the room. She pulled down the black mask that covered her chin in the process and gave Kankuro a smile.

"It's been a while, Kankuro-san. It's good to see you," Then she turned to Gaara and frowned. "Kazekage-sama," she said coolly bowing in a perfunctory way that was just shy of impolite. _Wow, what the hell happened between these two while I was gone?_

"I've heard about what happened at Greenhouse 2 today, Ai-san," Gaara said, frostily surveying the woman in front of him.

"Yes, Kazekage-sama," Aiynuur said, putting a slightly sardonic lilt on his honorific. "I thought it would be best to address what happened proactively with you, so I'm here now."

"Ah," Gaara replied, clearly unsure of how to handle her offensive approach. "How...conscientious of you. Most people don't usually seek out a verbal dressing-down so readily."

Aiynuur paused for a moment, before replying smartly. "As a _verbal_ dressing-down is the only one it seems I can hope to receive from you, I thought I'd make the best of it."

Kankuro nearly choked. Wide-eyed, he looked from Aiynuur to Gaara and back again.

"Uh...I'll leave," he said, beginning to get up from his seat.

"Stay," Gaara commanded.

Kankuro was about to object, but caught Gaara's desperate expression and took pity on him. It was clear that Gaara was completely out of his depth where Aiynuur was concerned. Kankuro cast back in his memory - he'd never really done the work of a proper older brother and explained the in's and out's of women and relationships. He supposed he owed Gaara at least this, although he suspected his presence would only make what came next more awkward for all of them. Kankuro sat back down but scooted his chair further away from the crossfire.

Gaara took a deep breath and stood up from his chair. He rounded the desk and then sat against the edge, crossing his arms over his chest and looking at Aiynuur sternly, who was doing her best to stand defiantly a few feet away.

"Ai," Gaara said, his low voice almost a whisper. "Why would you do this to me, to yourself? You know, of all people, the type of men who would try to take you away from me."

Aiynuur shifted where she stood, clearly thrown off by Gaara's soft approach. Aiynuur licked her lips nervously - as if unsure of what to say next.

"You told me there were people here that I could help," Aiynuur replied. "Well, I met one of them. Do you want to know her name?"

When Gaara grimaced but did not reply, Ai continued.

"Tori - her name is Tori, and she's a little girl," Aiynuur said. "And she looks like the bird she's named after because she's so thin, Gaara. She's so thin. Tori's very sick. Her father takes her down to the greenhouses when she feels strong enough because the plants make her happy. She loves your fat little candy barrel cacti the most. You know, like the one I destroyed when we first met here in this room? Guess what medicine Tori needs to survive?"

Gaara exhaled, squeezing his eyes shut and holding bridge of his nose. "I think I can guess - the one derived from the Century Plant flower."

"Yeah, that's the one," Ai nodded, lifting her chin in defiance. She glanced at Kankuro and gave him a quick look that seemed to convey an apology for his barring witness to their intimate conversation. Ai stepped in closer to Gaara and looked up into his face.

"You asked me to find something here to love," Aiynuur said softly. "Well, I can't love something you won't let me touch. And I can't help people you won't let me serve. I lived a life inside a petri dish before, and then one on the other side your TV screen. It turns out - a greenhouse is just life under another sort of glass. You asked me to share your freedom with you. Well, I'm still waiting for that chance."

Gaara paused for a moment and then opened his mouth as if to speak.

"No," Aiynuur said, raising her hand to preempt whatever reply was about to pour out of the man in front of her. "Don't say a damn word - I want to stay mad at you right now." She looked into his cut crystal eyes and shook her head and said, "I'm going home."

Aiynuur held Gaara's gaze meaningfully for a beat and then turned on her heel. She nodded to Kankuro briefly before she walked away, pulling her mask up as she let herself out of the office.

Kankuro leaned forward in his chair and released a breath he didn't realize he was holding. He looked up at Gaara, who was still leaning on his desk, gazing intently at the space that Aiynuur had just occupied.

"Well, now I can guess what happened between you two. So she tried to...get close to you. Is that it?" Kankuro asked.

"No, it was the other way around. I...got close to her," Gaara responded.

"And?" Kankuro asked.

"And...then I might have disappeared," Gaara replied, his hand returning to the bridge of his nose again.

"Oh man - you _ghosted her?_ I mean - you *literally* disappeared?" Kankuro asked, incredulous.

Gaara nodded.

"Well shit, now I'm pissed off at you too, Gaara," Kankuro stood, and squared himself in front of his brother. "You've got to make things right by her."

"Make things right?" Gaara asked, turning to his brother. "What does that even mean? I thought I was - I thought I did make things right. I mean, how could I presume, after all she's been through, to touch her?"

"We've been here before, Gaara," Kankuro said, shaking his head.

Gaara paused for a moment.

"I'm going to have to apologize to her again, aren't I?" he asked.

"Well," Kankuro replied. "An apology is usually a good place to start."


	18. Chapter 18

Author Note - FF does not allow MA or mature content. If you'd like to read it, you can find the complete version of this chapter, in all its Lemon-filled glory on Archive of Our Own: /works/13542969/chapters/32653095

* * *

Aiynuur could hear a bright sound - a sound like a little tin bell jingling. She lay in bed. Early morning light shone through her windows - she hadn't bothered to draw the curtains last night. There it was, the jingling again. Aiynuur rolled onto her side on her narrow bed and opened her eyes.

Startled, she sat up. All over her floor, there were stacks of books, some of them four feet high. On her table and chairs, every bowl and plate in her small efficiency had been pulled out and filled with flowers and what seemed like every kind of fruit. She laughed aloud and looked about.

Ai noticed that the door to one of her cupboards in the kitchenette looked suspiciously ajar. Ai hopped out of bed and gingerly picked her way between the stacks of books to the cupboard. She opened it carefully, but a flood of melon bread still poured out onto her counter. Just then, she heard the sound of that bell again. Aiynuur swung around, but there was no one there.

Aiynuur walked forward carefully into the middle of the room and looked around, even checking the ceiling this time. Still, she didn't see him, and her inner eye was flooded with his energy, just as before. She heard the bell behind her a third time and turned so quickly that she did lose her balance and begin to topple over one of the stacks of books. Suddenly Gaara was there behind her, holding her up.

Aiynuur sighed and leaned gently back into his body. He wrapped his arms firmly around her in response, breathing her in. She looked down at his arms, clad as they usually were in his favorite maroon. She was quiet for a moment, savoring the warmth emanating from his body, soaking into hers like sunlight. Gaara leaned down and kissed the side of her neck, gently, arresting Aiynuur's breath briefly as he held her. She sighed.

"I really love you, you know," she said.

Just as she feared, she felt his body tense and she immediately regretted having said it. Here he was trying so hard - and now she was going to scare him away again. How could she be so stupid? But Gaara didn't disappear this time. Instead, he held her more tightly and leaned down to whisper in the shell of her ear.

"Aiynuur, Ai - what a perfect name I picked for you," he said, the ghost touch of his soft hot breath making her skin tingle. "I get to call you "love" to your face for the rest of my life, and you never even needed to know what you mean to me."

Aiynuur smiled, relief and love swelling over her. "Oh, I need to know," she replied, blinking wetness from her eyes.

"Ai - oh, Ai," Gaara said, and she felt his body shiver as he did - as if something he had long held was suddenly released. Aiynuur turned in his embrace. She faced him and smiled. Gaara looked at her, stunned for a moment and then pulled her into his arms, kissing her at first sweetly and then deeply.

Ai wrapped her arms around his neck again, and this time he didn't pull away from her. Instead, he leaned down and hooked an arm beneath her knees, sweeping her off her feet. Ai laughed in delight and the world went dark for a long moment. Surprised, light returned to the world and Aiynuur found that they were in the bedroom of Gaara's suite.

Impressed and a little alarmed by the speed of their transit and where they landed, Ai couldn't help but ask, "How?"

Gaara just shook his head, smiling mischievously. He turned towards the bed and set her carefully down on the mattress set in its stucco niche. He did not join her though and instead knelt beside it. He sought her hand and Aiynuur moved to sit up on the edge of the bed to be nearer to him. They stayed like that for a moment, looking at one another, he neatly dressed as always, her with her bed head tresses falling in uncontrolled waves around her face, her satiny sleep robe crumpled and loosely tied. Finally, he broke the silence.

"I'm sorry, Ai - I didn't realize that by not...touching you I could be hurting you," Gaara said. "I didn't even think that you could feel as if I had rejected you. I know that sounds foolish now."

Aiynuur smiled a bit sadly.

"I thought," Aiynuur said, breathing deeply to calm herself. "When you touched that scar...that you must have been so disgusted by it, and by me...I have so many of them," she explained.

A line of concern etched itself deeply on his brow. He looked at Ai with such a depth of emotion as he pulled her down off the bed and into his arms, folding her into his reach and then stroking her hair as she rested her head on his shoulder.

"Aiynuur - if ever your scars disturb me, it's only because I wasn't there. I couldn't defend you from those things," Gaara explained in a whisper.

"Ah, but you have your scars too, don't you?" Aiynuur said.

"Not anymore," Gaara responded, remembering the ragged, pocked skin the bomb-fire had left upon him. "Thanks to you."

Aiynuur shook her head against his shoulder. She leaned back from his embrace to look into his sea-glass eyes.

"No, that's not what I meant. You're forgetting this one," she said, tapping her own brow on the side where Gaara's bore the mark of the Shukaku. "You know that I could take that scar away from you too," she said.

"No," Gaara replied. "This one is a part of me - a part of who I am," he explained.

Aiynuur nodded. "So are mine."

"I understand," he replied, folding her back into his arms. "Please don't ever think that I find them ugly, Ai. I could never think of any part of you that way."

Aiynuur nodded again, her head tucked into the hollow of his shoulder. Ai heaved a huge sigh. It felt so good to be held by him and to be able to begin to let go of that fear of her own terribleness. There was a part of her that wished he knew the whole of it - what she was and the terrible things she had done. Perhaps this would be the right time to share it. Somehow this moment was too precious though, and she found she still could not.

Gaara broke the stillness between them again by lifting her up and gently placing her back on the bed. This time he did join her, sitting beside her there. Aiynuur smiled at him, and then a thought occurred to her.

"Where did you put that bell, anyway?" she asked, chuckling. Gaara wasn't wearing the collar she'd threatened to put on him, after all.

Gaara reached beneath the fold of his crisply tailored jacket and pulled out a little tin bell on a string from his pocket. He jangled it. Aiynuur took it in her hand and then set it down on the floor beside the bed.

"I've decided you can surprise me if you want," she said.

He smiled, "Good."

With that Gaara leaned forward and kissed her deeply, renewing that contact that he had rudely arrested from her when they first kissed. He broke the contact and whispered softly, "Tell me what you need, Ai."

Aiynuur grinned, "Why don't I show you?"

* * *

Ai sighed, closing her eyes. Gaara's bright energy burned all around her in her mind's eye. Tucked as she was beneath his arm she could hear the sound of his heart beating strongly, the unfettered respiration of his breath music to her.

They lay there peacefully for a few restful minutes before the manic jangling of the phone on Gaara's desk split that perfect moment. Gaara lay there unmoving, despite its ringing. Aiynuur looked up to see if he had fallen asleep, and it became apparent he really just didn't want to be bothered. Finally, he gave her a sheepish look before using his sand to retrieve the receiver.

He touched his index finger to her lips in a silent plea for her to remain quiet while he spoke. Playfully, she bit it gently. He chuckled at her before sitting up and putting the phone to his ear.

"Yes," he said.

Saddened that all of his attention was no longer hers, Aiynuur decided to see what she could do about that. Ai retrieved his hand again and started by kissing the back of it gently.

Encouraged when his gaze slid back to her she trailed her lips down the length of his forefinger and placed the tip of it in her mouth. She watched as his own lips parted, his eyelids closing slightly as she slid her tongue over the tip. Suddenly, his gaze turned from lustful to distant and then cold. Gaara stood abruptly and stepped away from the bed, out of her reach. Disappointed, Aiynuur frowned.

"Can you say that again?" Gaara asked, glancing at where Aiynuur sat on the bed. "Then it sounds like the consultant delivered just in time," Gaara said. "I'll be there in twenty minutes to review this new information. Tell the Hokage I am grateful - for everything."

Gaara hung up the phone and stood there for a moment, his back to her, his hand poised on the receiver. The tone of his body and his energy had shifted completely - something was wrong. Aiynuur stood, retrieving her robe and her underwear from the floor and putting them on.

"Gaara, what is it? Bad news?" she asked, stepping towards him.

To her disappointment, she watched as he stepped back from her advance. Ai paused, confused and a bit hurt by this sudden change after what they had just shared.

Gaara looked at her sadly - a silent struggle warring behind his eyes.

"There are things - many things that I realize I haven't told you about myself, my past," Gaara said to her.

Bemused by this sudden and serious non-sequitur, Aiynuur nodded. "I have secrets as well, as you know," she replied.

Quicker than her eyes could perceive, Gaara closed the distance between them and wrapped her in an embrace that brought her feet off the ground. Confused, Aiynuur returned his hug, sensing that was the response he needed in that moment. He held her just a bit too tightly for comfort, but Ai did not object.

"Ai," Gaara said, whispering into her ear. "I want you to know that you can trust me to defend you, no matter who comes at you, no matter what - has happened to you. No matter what, you are my friend, and I will protect you."

A sucking pit tore open inside of her as realization broke. "The consultant" - the man Gaara had hired to look into her past. The meaning of the exchange on the phone was suddenly clear - they had finally recovered information about her identity, what had happened to her, and likely what she had done at the Farm. She swallowed hard. Despite the sudden numbness in her body, a tear escaped her eye.

"No matter what," Aiynuur said. "Once you understand what I've done, what I am, I will understand if ultimately you cannot."

Gaara held her a moment longer before setting her on her feet. When he did, Ai found that she could not meet his eyes. He put on his shirt and grabbed his jacket from the floor. Ai watched as Gaara formed a clone of himself as he buttoned the stiff collar of his jacket.

Once the sandclone was fully formed and clothed as he was, Gaara turned to it and instructed it, "Stay here, protect her, no one gets in or out until I return."

The clone nodded, its eyes slid to where Aiynuur stood mutely gazing at the floor.

"Let me come with you," Aiynuur said, still looking down.

"What?" Gaara asked.

"Let me come with you," Aiynuur said, finally looking up into his face. "If they're going to tell you about the worst of me - I want to be there. Not to justify myself, but just to know. Then I will answer all the questions you still have."

Gaara paused for a moment, considering her request.

"There's video apparently - there are many of them, in fact," Gaara explained.

Aiynuur sucked air in through her teeth sharply. "Then we'll watch it together, and then you can decide."

"Decide what?" he asked.

"What to do with me," she explained.

Gaara hooked a finger beneath her chin raising it. "I've already decided what to do with you," he responded.

She smiled sadly, "We'll see."


	19. Chapter 19

Trigger Warnings for this Chapter: Blood, Kidnapping, Excessive Violence, General F-upped-ness

* * *

They stood in an all-white viewing room over at the Lookout. Aiynuur wore one of his cotton yukata. On one side of the room was a wall full of large video screens set edge-to-edge in two rows on top of each other. On the opposite wall was a large two-way mirror that spanned nearly the full length of the room. Aiynuur knew that Migime and Hidarime, who had observed her during her incarceration at the Bunker, sat behind the mirrored glass waiting to play the video for them.

She knew this because on their way down the long dark hall to the room, she had caught the eye of Migime as they passed the observation room. The expression on his face when he saw her and the way he shut the door quickly as they passed was enough to let her know that he already knew. He had already seen what they were about to show her and Gaara.

The door to the white room opened and Kankuro entered. He blinked in surprise when he saw Aiynuur standing there beside Gaara, although whether it was surprise at her presence or what she was wearing, or both, she could not say.

He nodded at both of them, his expression grave.

"So, what's the situation?" Gaara asked.

"To be brief - we're in trouble," Kankuro said, glancing quickly from Gaara to Aiynuur. "Serious trouble."

"Tell me everything. Aiynuur has permission to know what I know," Gaara replied, his stance firm, projecting a sense of confidence that neither Kankuro or Aiynuur seemed ready to endorse at the moment.

Kankuro took a deep breath.

"At around zero four-hundred hours this morning, an anonymous info cast was sent out. We don't know the full list of people it was sent to yet, but it appears to be a list of Kages, Lords, and prominent news outlets. As the video was not sent to us directly, we first heard about it through the Konoha back-channel about forty minutes ago. The video seems created to implicate Suna in the illegal creation of some sort of...devastating biological weapon."

"Biological weapon?" Gaara asked.

"Me - " Aiynuur said numbly. "He means me."

Gaara looked from Aiynuur to Kankuro. Kankuro continued.

"The video is short - only about four minutes long, but it's - powerful. We've confirmed that our allies in Mizunokuni and Tsuchinokuni have also received it. We've told them the video falsely frames Suna to provide a smokescreen for the real perpetrators, and that we're trying to get to the bottom of it. None-the-less, it's safe to say it's been sent to many other heads of state who we haven't yet been able to contact. Our allies want answers. Our enemies will soon want answers too."

Gaara turned to Aiynuur.

"Do you really want to see this with me?" he asked, trying to take her hand. Aiynuur stepped away, evading his touch. Gaara continued, "I suspect that what we're about to watch will bring back terrible memories for you."

Aiynuur nodded. "I will watch it," she said. "I'd rather know what apparently the entire world knows about me now."

Gaara looked at her for a moment, and then hit a button that was set in the wall to open up a comm link.

"Please play the video in question," Gaara commanded.

There was a moment of dead air on the line before Hidarime's voice came over the speaker.

"Kazekage-sama, as I mentioned on the phone, there is also the video that arrived late last night from Konoha. Within it there are case notes about something called Project May Queen - as well as over 63 hours of additional video. It includes the unedited video of the events we're about to watch. If it's alright with you, we will play the unedited video next, after showing you the one that was released that attempts to frame Suna for these crimes. I should warn you - it's all very graphic."

"We understand," Gaara replied watching Aiynuur who nodded at him. "Leave the lights up while we view it. Please begin."

In the monitor in the center, a high def color video came on. At first Aiynuur's mind couldn't quite process what she was seeing - but then all it once she recognized the scene. It was one of the underground labs at the Ant Farm, but for some reason, the symbol of Sunagakure had been stamped on the lower right-hand corner - clearly by whoever was trying to frame the Sand.

Aiynuur could see her own body lying, covered with a surgical sheet, apparently unconscious on a steel gurney about 10 feet away from the camera. Off screen, the clipped clinical tones of a woman's voice came over the feed. Aiynuur shivered as she recognized the voice.

"This is Terminal Separation Test Zero Six," the woman said. "The subject has been sedated. In past sedation tests, True Awakening has been observed. The Subject's unconscious body seems willing to heal itself in ways the conscious mind is not. It's unclear why this is so - it is possible the conscious mind has been encoded with human limitations."

"Attempts have been made to extract all preconceptions - but the personality and certain skill and knowledge engrams remain intact despite all our efforts, potentially because of the aforementioned healing abilities. Today's experiment is to observe the Subject's unconscious response to terminal separation trauma."

Narration finished, the female observer entered the frame to the right of the body - her body. Aiynuur's stomach dropped as the blond woman came into view. She, in particular, had always been inventive with her "experiments". A man's form came into view on the left side of the frame, just behind where her body lay on the gurney.

She recognized him immediately - the man in the mask - the architect of everything. He was dressed head to toe in plastic. A clear plastic shield covered his face. Aiynuur's body shivered again as she watched, noticing the instrument in his hands. He held a heavy, sharp cleaver, perhaps two feet in length. As she watched, he stroked her cheek in the video, brushing her hair away from her forehead as she lay there. It felt like a hand was clutching her stomach, and Ai fought back the urge to be sick.

The blond woman circled to the top of the gurney where Aiynuur's head lay. She gently tilted Aiynuur's head up, exposing her neck. Although she could not remember these events, sedated as she had been, she could guess what would happen next. The man in the mask lifted the cleaver and did a couple of test swings coming down just below her jaw. The woman's voice was heard again, "The separation needs to be done quickly to produce results observable to the naked eye. Please proceed on 3," she said to the man.

Aiynuur's mouth was dry. She heard the words, "1...2...3."

Unable to watch Aiynuur closed her eyes - pivoting on her heal at the last second. Her fingers were not enough to block out the sound the heavy blade. She choked back a sob and opened her eyes again. There in the reflection of the two-way glass in front of her she saw that her eyes had turned black. The whites were completely gone - disappeared as they did when she entered that other state. In the reflection, she also saw what happened next on the monitor screen. The woman held Aiynuur's head aloft, above her body. And then a miracle happened - one of her ugly, terrible miracles.

The flesh of her own neck twisted and grew, forming an obscene stalk that sought what the woman held it in her hands. As if to add insult to injury the woman moved what she held slightly, causing the part of her body that sought to reconstruct itself to follow it like a snake tracking its prey. Sweat blossomed over her brow as Aiynuur watched, her skin suddenly very hot.

The woman in the video finally stopped her movements and allowed the stalk to make contact. Reforming that connection, her body resumed its normal appearance and dimensions in a matter of seconds. In the observation room, Aiynuur's hands clawed frantically at her neck - the site where the trauma they had just watched had unfolded. On it, there was no mark she could feel or see in the reflection of the two-way mirror.

The blond woman's words rang in her ear, "The body seems willing to heal itself in ways the conscious mind is not." She had been put under by her captors many times until she learned to master her metabolism and burn up every drug they pumped into her. She never understood the entirety of what they were doing every time they had sedated her. Now she did.

"Pause it," Gaara ordered. "How many hours of video did you say the consultant recovered?"

"Sixty-three," Hidarime's grim voice replied.

Suddenly Gaara stood right behind her, he watched her face in the reflective surface of the mirror as she did. Their eyes met in the reflection.

"There's no need for you to keep watching this," he explained, his expression unreadable.

"Yes," Aiynuur said. "There is." She looked beyond her now black-eyed reflection in the mirror to whoever was on the other side of the mirrored glass. "Keep playing the video, please," she said.

Gaara nodded at the mirror, and the video resumed. But he remained, perhaps to monitor more closely the clearly visceral reaction she was having to what they had seen. They both watched what unfolded in the reflection.

The room had changed in this new scene. This time, Aiynuur did recognize what played in the reflection of the mirror. It was taken minutes before she escaped from the Farm. There was no sound in the video at first - she could see herself sitting on the floor, her shoulders shaking in unheard sobs just inside the bottom frame of the screen. The video seemed to be awkwardly edited. It was pixelated and seemed to be cropped in a way so that the viewer could not see what was on the floor of the room. But Aiynuur knew.

On the film, a man in scrubs entered the room and the sound came back on. Aiynuur's head snapped to attention the moment he did and she stood up, raising her arm up as she did. From the bottom of the frame, following the direction of her arm, an unidentifiable arc of red matter made contact with the man. Finding his eyes first, the dark material made quick work of him as he cried out - his body seemed to liquefy from the outside in. Another man came into the room and he met the same fate. The door now open, Aiynuur began a slow, stumbling advance.

The film cut to her walking down a hallway, barefoot, her head down. Her smock was sprayed with blood. A klaxon siren was blaring loudly. Had she been standing still, one would think that she stood in a pool of blood. But she was walking, and the red liquid moved before her, propelled by a force unknown. It moved, filling every crack and crevice as it crawled forward as if seeking something.

It found what it sought when a woman carrying a gun turned the corner abruptly. She got off a single shot which tore through the side of Aiynuur's neck. Ai paused for a moment, her head tilted at an unnatural angle until her body began to reconstruct itself. Before she could shoot again, the woman who attacked her was swallowed by the ink-dark redness. The pool at Aiynuur's feet grew bigger. She walked onwards.

The scene changed again. Five men were barricading themselves in a room. The man nearest the camera placed his palm of his shaking hand on the biometric door lock and its color turned to red. It was locked. All of the sudden a deep booming sound could be heard on the other side of the metal door he had just locked. The men stood in a semi-circle staring at the door as the menacing rhythmic pounding emanated from it.

"How strong is she?" the man nearest the door asked.

"We don't really know," another one responded.

"Fuck," the first man replied - lifting the gun that he held, readying to confront whatever was about to come through that door.

While their attention was focused on the door in front of them, the camera recorded a band of red seeping through the crack below the door behind them. The red liquid began to coalesce, silently taking on bone muscle and mass in a shape one would call human only for lack of a better word. Instead of a face and head, a cone-like protuberance crowned with rows of human eyes formed atop its shoulders. The eyes opened all at once. It moved silently towards the men, clasping the first one on the shoulder.

The man in the clutches of the creature screamed, and the man with the gun turned and shot him and the monster behind it, unloading the clip completely. The creature burst open into a dozen tentacled arms, and with each connection it made with the men in the room they quickly fell just as the rest did. The banging stopped. All was quiet.

From the ooze on the floor, a man's hand reformed and made contact with the biometric trigger on the door, It made a friendly chiming noise as it flashed green and unlocked. Aiynuur stepped through the now open door. The red flesh followed obediently. It performed the same trick to unlock the door at the far side of the room. The video stopped abruptly there.

Aiynuur stood in the viewing room, her body shaking, her face streaked with sweat and tears. She could see Gaara's outline behind her, he looked not at her but at the floor. It was over. Everything - the peace she knew - his love - was over. Because there was nothing doctored about what she had done in the video. That part was all too real. Without being requested, the unedited video that Hidarime had said he would show them after the edited one began to play.

The scene of her escape started over. She was back in the room, sitting on the floor. But this time the film was not pixelated or cropped awkwardly to hide something from the viewer. The sound of Aiynuur's desperate sobs could be clearly heard as she held her face in her hands. She knelt, facing away from the camera, her shoulders shaking as before. There on the ground lay the body of a lifeless child - a boy.

"Stop!" Aiynuur cried in the viewing room. "Stop! I can't watch it - I can't look at him," she lifted up her hand, sobbing, pounding on the mirrored glass in front of her. The video froze, paused on the scene of Aiynuur weeping over the body of that child. She began to cry again. Gaara stepped forward from behind, wrapping his arms around her shaking shoulders.

"How can you touch me?" she moaned.

He didn't let go.

"I'm sorry - I thought I could do it, but I can't watch. I can't watch. I put him back together again after they took him apart - I tried. Oh god, I tried. But he was gone - he was already gone."

"But why - why would they do that?" Gaara asked.

"Because they wanted to know if I could, that's why," she murmured. "Just to see if I could," and with that Aiynuur felt her legs grow slack. Stars burned brightly in her eyes for just a moment as she almost lost her narrowing hold on consciousness. Realizing she was fainting, Gaara laid her down on the ground.

"Lay still, Ai. You started to faint. Keep breathing," he said. "I'm going to loosen this," Gaara continued, undoing the hard knot of her sash that she'd tied at her waist. All Ai could do was to mutely stare at the ceiling as he did, her breath shallow and her heart pumping too fast.

"How can you stand to touch me?" she asked. "You saw what I did. You saw what I am."

After loosening the sash of the yukata she wore, he propped her legs on his shoulder to direct her blood flow back to her head. He looked down at her - trying hard to master the grief and anger that were chasing around in his brain. They lay there in silence for what felt like an age. Finally, Gaara spoke.

"Aiynuur - what do you know about my past?" Gaara asked.

Aiynuur sighed, "Not that much. You were a Jinchuuriki - some kind of vessel for a thing. You became the leader of this entire village when you were just 13 - which seems unbelievable. But your father had been murdered and so leadership fell to you. The thing that was inside of you was extracted soon after, and it almost killed you."

"It did kill me, as a matter of fact," Gaara said, taking her legs off his shoulder. "But that's not the point I want to make - Aiynuur, are you feeling well enough for me to show you something?"

Aiynuur sat up slowly, testing to see if the world would stay stationary as she did. She looked at him and nodded.

* * *

Sunlight returned to the world - Gaara set them down. They were outside in the mid-morning sunlight. How could today still be today? she wondered. So much had happened since he woke her up that morning. She looked around and saw that they stood in the Memorial Park where they had met accidentally just a few weeks ago.

Gaara took Aiynuur's hand and led her to one of the red stone tablets that adorned the memorial. He pointed at a name carved into the rock.

"Karura," Aiynuur read.

"My mother," Gaara explained with a sigh. "She didn't die in combat, like the title of the tablet says. But my father had her honored here anyway. She died sacrificing herself for the village, after all. She died because she gave birth to me. The spirit of the Shukaku - the tailed beast that my father sealed inside of me - weakened both of us. I was born premature - she lived just long enough to name me before she bled to death."

Gaara pulled her forward and pointed at another name, this time a man's.

"Yashamaru," Gaara said. "My uncle. He raised me after my mother died. My father, you see, wouldn't have anything to do with me. It was my fault, not his, in his estimation, that my mother died. Never mind that it was his hand that sealed the demon inside of me."

"As a boy, the entire village shunned me. I was unstable - a broken weapon too strong for my father to control - I could not master my emotions or my power, which literally had a mind of its own. My uncle - he was the only person who I thought cared for me in the world. But when I was 6, he tried to murder me after he explained to me that he never loved me at all."

"Why?" Aiynuur asked, shocked.

"My father ordered him to," he explained.

"Oh my God," Aiynuur replied, struck dumb by this admission.

"Yes, my uncle was the first person I killed in self-defense. One could argue that it was a reflex for self-preservation at that time, but the next time...it was not."

Gaara pulled her forward for a third time, this time he leaned down and circled with his finger four names on one of the tablets.

"These four men are listed together here because they died at the same time, by my hand. My mental stability was growing worse. I was completely alone. I could not sleep because of the thing inside me. If I did, it would take over my body. It whispered things to me. At night I roved the streets - unseen, mostly. But seen enough to frighten the whole City by my mere existence. My father asked these four to attempt another assassination."

"When I killed them, it wasn't a reflex, it was calculated. I ensnared each and dispatched them, one by one. With them, I perfected a new move - the Sand Binding Coffin. I was 7 years old. Ai - when you killed those people who hurt you, who murdered that boy. Was there a part of you that enjoyed it? For me, it's that part - that thing in me that hunted those men that has always been the hardest to reconcile, because the Shukaku may be gone, but it lives in me still. There are 7 more names I can show you..."

"No," Aiynuur responded, numbly. "I think I understand."

"Do you?" Gaara said, facing her and taking up her hands in his.

"Do you? Aiynuur, no one is prepared to understand you like I can. No one will ever love you - every part of you - quite the same way that I do. Please, look at me," he asked. Gaara swallowed hard when her eyes met his, and said, "Share my freedom, Aiynuur, but don't stop there. Share my life. Share everything - or nothing. It's up to you. You're in control. Just don't go now - just because I know what you had to do. Because now you know about me too."

Aiynuur's lip trembled as she looked at him. She nodded, and he pulled her in and held her tightly as her body shook against his. Finally, she broke the silence.

"Gaara, I'm so tired, and I need a goddamn shower."

Gaara laughed softly and kissed the top of her head.

"Those are problems I'm equipped to solve, let's go back home and take care of you. And then we'll decide what to do about - everything else. No matter what, Aiynuur, as long as you want me, I'm never letting you go."


	20. Chapter 20

The light that indicated the feed connection was ready blinked green. He flipped on the connection. The face of his friend, usually smiling, greeted him with a stern expression unique to the man he'd become.

"Naruto - it's good to see you," Gaara replied.

Naruto smiled weakly in response, his eyes tired and worried. "Hey - we stepped into a viper's nest this time, didn't we?"

"Has Konoha or Kabuto-san been implicated in this at all?" Gaara asked.

"No, thankfully," Naruto shook his head.

"That's good news - then it's just Suna that's been hung out to dry. It seems likely this came from the Grass - have you had any luck tracing the source of the video feed?"

"Not yet," Naruto said. "But maybe we won't need to. There is one man who could explain the truth and let you all off the hook - the man who Kabuto-san found in Blood Prison."

"Blood Prison? What is his name?" Gaara demanded.

Naruto frowned, his mouth transforming into a thin flat line.

"Tell me - I need to know," Gaara pressed. "He needs to be acquired somehow if we're going to prove our innocence in this."

"There's something you should know about this man," Naruto explained. "He was the man who abducted this woman Ai in the first place. The one who - well, you've seen the video. I don't need to tell you."

Gaara's face lost all expression for a moment.

"You're afraid of telling me his name, aren't you? Afraid of what I might do." Gaara stated.

"I saw the video too. Kabuto-san told me there were dozens more hours of video he copied from the Grass's data bank. If someone were to do that to Hinata..." Naruto said.

"Yes," Gaara said, coolly. "I understand your concern. There's a reason why I have not seen any more of the video. I have a team reviewing it for anything that implicates the Grass. If I made the mistake of watching more - then, yes, I don't believe anyone remotely responsible for this would survive. But for the moment, clearing the Village's name and protecting Ai are my top priorities."

"Is she a danger?" Naruto asked, point blank.

Gaara shook his head. "No more than you or I once were," he replied. "After we first met, anyway."

Naruto nodded his head. That was enough for him.

"In that case, I have Kabuto-san here. He will explain what he knows."

The monitor switched to a shot of the white haired bespectacled man who Gaara had secretly hired to track down Aiynuur's past. He, as Gaara had long ago suspected, had ended up being the perfect man for the task.

"Thank you, Kabuto-san, for what you've done. I won't forget this."

Kabuto nodded. "The Konoha Orphanage thanks you, Kazekage-sama, for your sizable donation. Under different circumstances, we'd put your name up on a plaque."

"Your help is thanks enough," Gaara said.

"Alright, I'll get down to the facts," Kabuto began. "The man who I contacted in Hozuki Prison is named Zettai Rei. I enclosed information about him in the drive that you have. He's a scientist and a religious radical - a follower of the Araki, the Wild Tree. The Aokigahara, the followers of this religion, believe in an immortal creatrix who will return someday to cleanse the world of those she deems unworthy. It was Zettai's twisted goal to try to unleash this Goddess, as he calls her."

"How did Ai get mixed up in it - did you find that out?" Gaara asked.

"Zettai refused to tell me, saying that her past was unimportant. But I was able to determine that Shiro - the fourth son of the Grass Daimyo - was paying for his research, and was responsible for imprisoning Zettai when the whole thing blew up in his face. There may be more information on the drive that I provided that might explain how she became the focus of his mania. I did not review much of it - my job was simply to deliver it to you."

"You've broken into Blood Prison now once - can you give me instructions on how it can be done again?" Gaara asked. "If Zettai is the only one that can exonerate all of us, then he must be recovered before he can be decommissioned by Shiro."

"I could tell you how to get in, but it won't do you any good," Kabuto remarked.

"Please, don't tell me he is already dead," Gaara stated flatly.

"No - he escaped. Apparently a few days after I spoke with him," Kabuto explained.

"Huh, and one the news outlets report on this, he will know that Suna has been framed for his crimes..." Gaara said.

"That's right," Kabuto said, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose. "He will suspect Suna has been blamed because Suna currently has her, and is therefore the biggest threat to the Grass. He's coming straight to you. His obsession with this woman and the delusion of what she represents to him is so extreme, I'm certain he will stop at nothing to find her now that he's free."

Gaara sat back in his chair, raising his forefinger to his lips thoughtfully.

"Good," he replied. "Then I will make sure he arrives here...alive. Naruto, Suna will be calling a council meeting of the 5 to plead our case."

"Konoha will support you," Naruto said, without hesitation.

"Thank you," Gaara replied, not for the first time fiercely grateful for this man's friendship.

* * *

Zettai followed her through the streets. The woman who he had always lovingly referred to as the Subject had blossomed, just as he knew she would, now that she had awakened the goddess form. Her long black hair was glossy, her eyes were bright, her body looked full and healthy. The time was ripe to reclaim her so that they could begin the end.

He had come prepared. He expected her to be resistant yet. The fact that she did not identify herself by the name Araki as Kabuto indicated at the prison concerned him. Her mind likely needed to be physically reset again. Zettai was prepared to do it and he knew how. He had done it before. She would lose the memory of having awoken when she destroyed the lab, but she would also lose the memory of her time in Suna, which was just as well.

Once her episodic memory was cleansed he could begin again. This time, on his own, he would take a different approach than he had while studying her in the lab. He knew what it took to awaken her now. This time, he looked forward to seducing her - to being her friend after she was reset. Then, once she was thoroughly indoctrinated and in his hand, she would take her place in his plan.

To aid him in this effort, Zettai had acquired what amounted to a souped up taser. After the Subject learned how to resist the sedatives they gave her, he had discovered that a strong electrical shock to the right place in the back of her neck would still take her down, quietly and quickly. The human nervous system operated on a series of electrical impulses, and there was nothing even she could change about that.

The trick of course, would be getting close enough to drop her, but to do it in a public place where his more familiar chakra would be lost in the fray. Then he would have to escape quickly enough to evade anyone who might try to assist her. Trained as a Grass Shinobi and as a warrior of the Araki - he was less concerned about getting away once she was down. He could do it easily.

Zettai turned a corner and saw the woman pass under the gate into the West Suna marketplace. Perfect. A broad and bustling market was the ideal place to apprehend her. He would be nothing but a tree in the forest here. He watched her browse the market stalls, looking at this and that. He advanced closer, minute by minute. Finally the right moment arrived, she was passing a throng of people, their attention all drawn to a street performer. Zettai stepped up quickly but smoothly behind the small woman. Zeroing in on the right place on her neck with medical precision he rammed the live electrode home into her skin.

Amazingly she didn't collapse immediately. She didn't even react. Zettai rolled his thumb over the dial, upping the juice. It was then that he realized that the sound of the market had eerily stopped. He glanced quickly to the side and realized that all movement - every single person in the crowded marketplace had frozen in their action. That's when he felt her hand on his neck. No, he realized, not her hand.

A strangled noise gurgled from his windpipe as Zettai was lifted bodily from the ground by his throat. He recognized the man who held him immediately, his menacing black rimmed eyes and the character on his face unmistakable - the Kazekage. Zettai made a mewling wheezing sound as his hands struggled with the one the held his throat. It was useless. The fingers that held him were made of stone. The last thing that Zettai saw was the people of the market closing in around him. But they weren't the people he had passed before anymore, they were all, Zettai saw, copies of that man

There in front of him, one of the figures of the Kazekage stood. Next to him stood the woman, the real one, he realized. They held hands and watched together as Zettai lost his breathless struggle. The world went black. Zettai fell under the dark.

* * *

Shikamaru stood just behind Naruto's chair at the mirror black table at the Kage Summit. Things were not going quite as expected. For one thing, Kankuro had just entered the room at the Shinobi Union's headquarters in the Iron Country in Gaara's place.

He walked in with the square green hat that was the symbol of Gaara's office and set it down on the horse-shoe shaped table. Kankuro did not sit in the chair, but he did stand beside it. Mifune, the venerable General of the Iron Country overseeing the Summit, gave Kankuro a questioning look.

"Today I am representing Sunagakure," Kankuro remarked simply. Looks were exchanged among the others assembled. Naruto seemed surprised too. _Where was Gaara?_

"In that case, we will begin," Mifune replied. Mifune hit one of the buttons on the console in front of him. Twenty-six video monitors blinked to life, among them the Daimyo of the Grass Country, Shikamaru noted. He wasn't surprised there were so many on the feed. The Daimyos, Lords, and other Kages wanted to see what information Suna would present today about the video, and the newly revealed "asset". They did not, however, particularly want to be in the same room with her.

The Kages of the major nations and their retinues were present for two reasons. It was politically wise of them to show trust in Suna by showing up. It would also be showing weakness to hide. All the same - after seeing the doctored video, and the subsequent un-edited version that Suna had released in response - it was clear that no one except the Suna and Konoha delegations felt comfortable about being there. If Suna truly wanted to make a grab for supremacy over the other four, now would be the time to do it. The tension was thick. The lack of the Kazekage only raised the stakes.

"Good Afternoon," Mifune began. "Information has come to light that certain parties have been engaging in human experimentation that has been outlawed by the 5 and the Shinobi Union. Today's meeting is to enable Sunagakure to share further information so a determination as to whether a formal investigation of these crimes is warranted."

"You do not go far enough," interrupted the Daimyo of the Rock Country. "The information that's come to light indicates that Suna has either created, or at least come into the possession of a potentially devastating asset, an asset that threatens the balance of our peace. They have not denied this fact, and, as I understand it, even mean to present it to this assembly today. An investigation is not enough. We must also determine how to neutralize and dispose of this dangerous entity."

"Your stance on this has been noted, Rin-sama," Mifune remarked. "Before any such discussion is entertained, Suna will present its case."

With that, Kankuro stepped forward into the space in the center of the room.

"Thank you for assembling today upon Suna's request. We are gratified to have the timely opportunity to address the misinformation that has been spread to damage our Village's reputation. Today we will present to you the testimony of two people who can shed light on this matter. One will be the woman known to us as Aiynuur, whose torture and later escape from her brutal captors was captured in the videos you have all seen."

"We will also bring forward another witness by the name of Zettai Rei," Kankuro continued. "He has confessed his responsibility as the architect of this woman's internment, and the hardships she subsequently experienced. Today he will make the same confession in front of you. He will also let it be known which actors are responsible for this travesty, and what nation they are a part of."

An excited murmur erupted among the viewers as Kankuro nodded to one of his fellow Suna delegates. A middle-aged man with black hair lanced through with streaks of white was marched into the room. He was manacled to a chair placed in front of the dais where General Mifune sat.

"Introduce yourself," Kankuro ordered.

"Zettai Rei of the Grass Country," Zettai responded calmly, surveying Kankuro and the assembled company through tangled strands of his wild hair.

There was another murmur as Zettai's identity as a citizen of the Grass Country was disclosed. Then, to Shikamaru's surprise, Kankuro addressed Tobo-sama, the Daimyo of the Grass Country directly.

"Tobo-sama, can you verify this is true?" Kankuro asked.

The old man, robed in yellow silk nodded gravely. "Yes, we have confirmed that he is who he says he is."

Hisses and sounds of surprise sussurated over the speakers of the televised feeds. _Was the Grass Daimyo openly implicating himself?_

"Thank you, Tobo-sama," Kankuro replied. "Zettai - please describe what your most recent position was, and who you reported to and were funded by."

"Ah -," Zettai's head lolled back in his chair and he gazed at Kankuro out of half-lidded eyes. "But our agreement, Kankuro-san. Surely you haven't forgotten it?"

"Our agreement," Kankuro said, his voice low with anger, "Was that you would not die by the Kazekage's hand, and instead be surrendered to the graces of this assembly."

"I know what you said...but what about what I asked for?"

"No," Kankuro replied. "I refuse to subject Aiynuur-san to another minute of your company. I apologize, Tobo-sama, but our witness is uncooperative, would you mind informing the assembly of the facts as you know them?" Kankuro asked the Grass Daimyo, bowing politely as he did.

The Daimyo sighed.

"Yes, Kankuro-san. I am saddened to report to the assembly that I learned just a few days ago, thanks to the intercession of the Sand, that my own son, Shiro, is responsible for the current situation. It seems that he funded this fool to imprison and torture the asset in question under the auspices of studying her abilities. My clerks have confirmed that he was funneling money from enterprises he managed on behalf of our clan to do so, and evidence of the video files that you all have seen have been identified on one of his servers."

"I knew nothing of these crimes. It seems apparent that my son was contemplating attempting a power-play to remove both me, and his elder brother, the heir. Our family is horrified. He and his conspirators have been arrested and, we assure you, will be dealt with," the Daimyo replied. "We are thankful to Sunagakure for telling us in advance of this meeting to spare us the humiliation of discovering his transgressions here. We also regret his apparent responsibility for the false implication of the Wind Nation and the Village of Suna in these crimes."

"Thank you, Tobo-sama. We are deeply grateful for your candor about such a troubling subject," Kankuro said, inclining his head again. "Since it seems apparent that this man refuses to speak," Kankuro continued, indicating Zettai, who sat leering at the assembly from his chair. "I will ask Suna's other witness to step forward."

A buzz among the collective welled up again. They were about to see the red-fingered witch who perpetrated the horrors of that underground lab here and in real-time. Shikamaru watched as the guards present shifted subtly - readying themselves to protect the Kages from whatever stepped through that door. Kankuro gave the signal, and another entryway opened.

Through it stepped Gaara, dressed not in his white robes of office, but instead from head to toe in black, his usual stiff collar at his neck, his gourd slung at his side. A study in contrast, the figure of a delicate woman, Aiynuur's, stood beside him. Her arm was hooked around the Kazekage's.

She wore a white kimono threaded with shades of pink forming the pattern of a riotous flower that Shikamaru could not identify. Her face was covered with a thin white veil. Gaara led her with a measured gate, almost tenderly into the lit space at the center of the room. He glared at Zettai as they passed him. His face expressionless, but his eyes holding a promise if Zettai stepped out of line.

Gaara escorted her to the center of the brightly lit space and squeezed Aiynuur's arm once gently before disentangling his, and stepping back to stand in the space between her and Zettai. Still veiled, Aiynuur seemed to glow under the bright lights. Shikamaru watched her slight shoulders shake before she took a deep breath, and lifted away the veil to look at the assembled company. A shiver ran through the crowd at the sight of her face.

Far from the mad-eyed creature they had expected, here stood a delicate woman with wide brown-red eyes and dark hair neatly coiled a the top of her head. Her lips were dark as cherries, the pink in her kimono gave a rosy cast to her skin. She was beautiful. What's more - by guiding Aiynuur to the center of the room by hand, and dressing her in a way that starkly juxtaposed with his own severe figure, Gaara had made Aiynuur appear every inch the sort of vulnerable woman that a man would die to protect.

Briefed on the extent of the horrors she'd endured, Shikamaru knew that Aiynuur's spine was made of steel, but he couldn't help but smile at the sight. To look at her now, the idea that she was a threat would seem simply laughable, and any man or woman who claimed otherwise would look like a weak fool. _Well played, Gaara._

"Aiynuur-san, thank you for coming to speak to the assembly today," Kankuru said. "I know how difficult it must be to face your assailant, and to speak in front of so many heads of state."

"Ah," Aiynuur said, smiling at Kankuro. "You forgot to mention the part where these people all decide my fate," she tried to joke airily but her eyes glittered with sadness. "But I'm sorry, everyone, I must start at the beginning I know," she said looking down and taking another breath.

"My born name is Yuzuna Ume - but please, don't call me by that name. Because I don't remember it. The man who sits before you, Zettai Rei, took that name from me, along with the memories of the first 24 years of my life. I'm only now beginning to piece together my past, thanks to my friends in Sunagakure, and now with the help of the Grass," she nodded to Tobo-sama.

"What I know of myself, I know from the same records that will be made available to the investigators. I am now 27 years old. I was born in the Grass Country. I was trained as a scientist and a doctor. I was working, in fact, with Zettai Rei as one of his assistants on a different project when I was the victim of an attack."

"Through Zettai's connections with the Aokigahara, we were given the chance to study something exceptional - the Araki, a small tree that's been confirmed to be over 3,000 years old. From the lab notes recovered, it seems that our team was trying to discover new medical treatments that could be derived by unraveling the secrets of its longevity. Although, given what I know of this man, Zettai, I question whether his intentions were ever so pure."

"Unfortunately, that's when I suffered a terrible accident. The insurgent group that calls themselves the Flowers of the Grass attacked the lab. This can be confirmed from articles published in the news media at the time. My name - Yuzuna Ume - is listed among the dead. My parents don't know yet that I am still alive, at least, I hope they don't," Aiynuur said, wiping a tear from her cheek as she did. "Otherwise, I imagine they'll be very frightened and confused. But, I'm sorry, that's beside the point."

"There's no direct evidence of what happened to make me as I am right now, but in the lab notes on me, Zettai and his team speculated that whatever made the tree immortal leaped from the tree to me in the fire, perhaps because I was going to die. I don't know. The tree itself was destroyed."

"It all seems unbelievable I know, but the facts are there, and can be verified. And fortunately _his_ testimony isn't needed for that," Aiynuur said, raising her chin as she looked beyond Gaara to Zettai. Zettai stared back at her and licked his lips. Aiynuur turned away in disgust - Gaara moved closer to Zettai, nearly standing over the man now.

"Thank you for your testimony, Aiynuur-san," Kankuro said.

Aiynuur nodded. She looked relieved that that ordeal was over. A buzz of talk arose again on the feed, it was clear that many of the more soft-hearted leaders had been charmed by Aiynuur's apparent honesty and feeling. Still other faces where stony and silent. A victim though she may be, this was still the same woman who had so spectacularly taken down 17 men and women on her own, many of them trained shinobi.

General Mifune wrapped on his podium with his hard black gavel iron.

"Testimony having been heard, the assembly is now to vote regarding whether there should be an investigation into the alleged crimes perpetrated by Zettai Rei and Shiro Takashi of the Grass," he said.

There was a brief pause as the electronic vote submissions appeared on each screen and were tabulated via the feed.

"The votes are unanimous. These crimes will be investigated by the 5 and the Shinobi Union. In the mean time the man Zettai Rei will be imprisoned here until trial, and with that determination I now conclude..."

"Wait - my point from before still stands," it was the Daimyo of the Rock Country once again. "Regardless of this..."woman's" origins, victim or not, the fact remains that with her Suna has gained a tremendously powerful tool, one that could..."

"I am no one's tool," Aiynuur's voice rang out clearly as she stepped back into the light. "I am no one's tool," she said again, fiercely. A hush fell over the assembly. "For nearly three years - _three years_ , that man," Aiynuur said, pointing at Zettai once again. "That man tried to make me his tool. He and his people shot me, drowned me, pulled my body apart - but he _never_ , _never_ broke me. If you think that anyone...anyone is ever going to make me their tool - a pawn in the pathetic power play that you call your lives - then you are just as crazy as Zettai is."

The assembly was stunned for one long moment. Shikamaru unsuccessfully suppressed a smirk. Telling the assembled Daimyo's and leaders that they were pathetic and crazy took a lot of moxie. Sadly it was brashness that might only hurt her cause. It was the Grass Daimyo who rose to the bait this time.

"As the woman, Aiynuur-san, is from the Grass and was victimized by my son, I feel a sense of responsibility for her future. We could take custodianship over her until such time as..."

"Ha, I bet you could!" Interjected the acrid voice of the Daimyo of the Lightning.

A roar of vitriol and accusations roiled out of the speakers on the monitors. Into this chaos, the solid form of Gaara's black-clad body stepped. His sudden silent presence at the center of the room seemed to arrest the attention of the assembly as surely as a falling comet. He stood with that still intensity that was uniquely his own and waited for the argument to grow quiet. Almost immediately it did.

"As you have no doubt noted," Gaara began. "I am not wearing my robes of office today. That's because today I come to you, not as the Kazekage of the Sand, but instead as a man. I came to tell you this. The freedom and rights of Yuzuna Ume, the woman who is known now as Aiynuur, are not negotiable under any circumstances."

"Anyone who objects to this reality will deal with me - not Suna. Not the Wind Country. Not its allies. Only me. Before I confront any challenger, I will disavow all responsibilities as Kage, all connections to the Sand, and to the Wind - leaving me answerable only to my own...discretion," Gaara said, sweeping the length of the room and assembly monitors.

"Anyone who feels strong enough to challenge me personally on this determination is welcome to try."

That said, Gaara extended his hand out to Aiynuur. A smile, bright as a bud breaking, flashed across Ai's face as she accepted it, allowing him to draw her in and hook her arm through his once again.

It was General Mifune who broke the silence. "Well, I believe that settles the issue, ladies and gentlemen," he said banging the gavel to adjourn the meeting. And then he added with a wry smile, "I know I for one, hope to receive an invitation to the wedding."

Aiynuur's face flushed bright red as she tried to hide her embarrassed smile. Gaara nodded respectfully to Mifune, thankful that the General had concluded the audience before any of their dissenters could speak again. Gaara looked up at the monitors and saw that some of the dignitaries were indeed trying to speak via their microphones - but Mifune had apparently cut their audio.

Aiynuur looked up at Gaara, her smile returning to her face again. He leaned down to let her whisper in his ear as the bur of after-meeting talk of the assembled Shinobi around them began.

"I'm so happy that's done. But, Gaara, it can't possibly be that easy, can it?" she asked, worry showing plainly on her face.

"It won't be," he said. "But there again, you'll have to trust me, Love."

* * *

They settled together in a breathless jumble on the bed. Aiynuur rolled onto her back with a sigh, their legs still tangled together. Gaara smiled at her and moved onto his side so he could trace an invisible figure eight on the patch of sensitive skin just above her navel. Ai shivered and grabbed up his hand, clutching it to her breast, where he could feel her heart beat beneath her skin.

"What should we do now?" she asked, stroking the back of his hand.

"Hmmm," Gaara said, looking at the bright patch of moonlight on the floor of their bedroom. He smiled.

"I know, why don't you read to me?" he asked. "I asked you to find something suitable for me long ago - but then, one or two things got in the way," Gaara said.

"Mmmm...yes, I have just the thing," Aiynuur said.

"Should I grab you the book you need?" he asked.

"No, I have it right here," she said, tapping on the hand the covered her heart. "I think if I went through everything at the Farm all over again - I'd come out, and I'd still know it. It's Rumi, of course," she explained. Gaara smiled in anticipation.

"Here goes," Aiynuur said, still holding his hand above her heart.

"The minute I heard my first love story,  
I started looking for you, not knowing  
how blind that was.  
Lovers don't finally meet somewhere,  
they're in each other all along."

Her poem finished, Gaara leaned in and kissed her.

* * *

To understand the last line, you may enjoy going back to Chapter 5, and re-reading the poem that Gaara "accidentally" reads to Ai. Thanks to everyone who made it this far! I'd love to hear what you thought. I worked really heard to write this, and I appreciate you. Feel free to PM or comment. 3


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